My very first rejection letter was from Marion Zimmer Bradley. It was both harsh and helpful. So I was thrilled when, years later, I made one of my first professional sales to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine. I was even happier when I sold a story to her anthology Sword & Sorceress XXI.

I’m proud of those stories. I believe the Sword & Sorceress series was important, and I’m grateful to Bradley for creating it. I believe her magazine helped a lot of new writers, and her books helped countless readers. All of which makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic.

A blog post from Deirdre Saoirse Moen, in which Moira Greyland, daughter of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Walter Breen, states that Bradley molested her starting when she was three years old and continuing until Greyland was twelve and able to walk away. Greyland also describes Breen as “a serial rapist with many, many victims,” but says Marion “was far, far worse.”

The “Breendoggle” Wiki. Much of fandom seemed to know about the allegations against Breen. The documentation includes eyewitness accounts of Breen molesting children and discussion that even if Breen was indeed an active pedophile, that doesn’t mean he should be expelled from fandom.

Silence is Complicity. Natalie Luhrs talks about Breen, MZB, and the damage done by prioritizing silence over safety, complicity over acting to protect the vulnerable members of our community.

There’s more out there, including people defending MZB, as well as people insisting we must “separate the art from the artist” and not let MZB’s “alleged” crimes detract from the good she’s done. And there’s the argument that since MZB died fifteen years ago, there’s no point to bringing up all of this ugliness and smearing the name of a celebrated author.

I disagree.

To begin with, while Bradley and Breen are both gone from this world, their victims survive. The damage they inflicted lives on. Are you going to tell victims of rape/abuse that nobody’s allowed to acknowledge what was done to them? That the need to protect the reputation of the dead is more important than allowing victims their voice? To hell with that.

Second, as Luhrs and others have pointed out, many of the same behaviors that allowed this abuse to continue for so long are still present in fandom and elsewhere today. We excuse sexual harassment as social awkwardness. We ignore ongoing harassment and assault for years or decades because someone happens to be a big name author or editor. Half of fandom shirks from the mere thought of excluding known predators, because for some, sexual harassment and assault are lesser crimes than shunning a predator from a convention.

I’m not going to say that people should or shouldn’t throw all of MZB’s books away. There are authors whose careers might not have happened without MZB’s help, and our genre is better for many of them. But it’s also important to acknowledge that predators exist. They may be in positions of power and influence. Sometimes, they’re people who have done good work for a community. They often have very smooth, well-practiced tactics for defending or excusing their actions.

When we ignore ongoing harassment and abuse, when we belittle efforts to create harassment policies, when we respond to people speaking out about their own abuse and harassment by accusing them of starting “lynch mobs” and “witch hunts,” we’re teaching predators that fandom is a safe hunting ground. We’re teaching them that they will be protected, and their victims will be sacrificed so we can cling to an illusion of inclusiveness.

Excellent post. I discovered about the Breen/MZB abuse story this week, and I thought it was terrible. I’m not one to separate art from the artist– the work that MZB created in her lifetime may be praiseworthy. I admit I’ve not been much of a fan. My problem is that along with the art… There’s … This. I can’t read her work any more without being a little sick inside.

MartinJun 23, 2014 @ 09:45:21

I am reeling with shock. It is important to tell such stories because a lot of people (like me) don’t/didn’t know.

It does not matter if i throw the remaining books from her away as i won’t be able to read and enjoy them ever again.

Thank you so much for writing this. I’m so sick of hearing people say that, for example, since there’s no way to know the intimate details of everyone you give money to, you shouldn’t withhold your money when you *do* know about something like this. And while I get why people talk about separating the artist from the art, that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t have a really serious discussion about how the artist’s behavior affects the people around them and how that should be responded to. For me, it’s just impossible to separate out on an emotional level. This sort of thing is so repellent to me that I wouldn’t be *able* to set it aside while reading her work. And I’m not sure I’d want to be the person who could easily set it aside.

anglerfish07Jun 23, 2014 @ 21:14:30

Heather, I agree. I don’t want to be the kind of person who could put this easily from their minds. I’m never, ever going to read Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books. I believe Moira Greyland, and I admire her strength and courage in reporting the sexual abuse she had suffered.

Diane RaetzJun 24, 2014 @ 15:32:32

Does Moria get royalties from MZB’s work? Cause if she does I’d be tempted to rebut the books as a donation–but I don’t think I could ever read them again

I discovered Darkover when I was in highschool and Mists of Avalon when I was about 15. I was saddened and disgusted to hear of MZB’s abuse of others, protecting a predator and the rest of fandom protecting known predators because they had glowy halos (because FAMOUS AUTHORS).

I think the best lesson all of fandom can take from this is that the truth will out in the end, as with your post.

We need to constantly remind people they don’t have the right to claim confidentiality or copyright over their emails and social media posts to hide their written abuse, slander and libel. We need to remind people that they will be held accountable for their behaviour, whether it’s a grope in a con, cruel (illegal) words in an office or running in a pack to destroy someone.

Some perpetrators might win in life but be warned: like MZB, your reputation isn’t safe after you die.

Readers should enjoy MZB’s work if you can; I won’t be reading it again. There are too many good things in life to waste on something with such tragic associations. Life’s too short to drink bad coffee.

Well spoken, Jim. Silence is never the answer. I wonder how many people who think MZB’s past should be hushed up viewed the similar situation with Woody Allen differently, not because the wife was not complicit, but because she was famous

Christopher RoseJun 23, 2014 @ 10:39:04

Has Russell Galen ever made a public statement regarding this issue? He is, or was, MZB’s agent, and on his agency’s website and in interviews he often mentions her as an early success. I generally admire his work, and It seems like he’s doing himself and his agency a disservice by not addressing this issue directly.

Although he had a longtime business relationship with MZB, I would be surprised if he knew about most of this. Although its longevity suggests their business relationship was very cordial, it was nonetheless a long distance business relationship. So far, my impression of what people in MZB’s professional life knew or heard is that the author had married a total scumbag and finally divorced him… and not much more than that. Her literary agent would know a lot more about her business/professional life than most other people, of course, but I doubt he’d know much more about her personal life than her many colleagues knew. Also, fandom is not the community, hobby, or social group of most literary agents who handle sf/f, so it wouldn’t be surprising is he heard less rumor about his client’s marriage, family, or social life than people who were involved in fandom did (and it appears that a lot of people involved in fandom never heard anything, after all).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have not been a fan of MZB’s books, but I just cannot wrap my head around treating authors like gods. I cannot fathom wanting a known child molester at a convention, nor doing nothing when a kid is molested right before your eyes.

Do. Not. Get.

I’m only now getting involved in organised fandom, and I hope enabling attitudes such as described are on their way out. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised because look at the Joe Paterno thing — this tends to happen in areas with pervasive social hierarchies, in which those at the top are often treated as idols — but I’m pretty sure I’ve never loved any book enough to try to excuse something like this.

The internet, and social media in particular, has made it much more difficult to bury stuff like this. Which I think is a very good thing.

BSDJun 23, 2014 @ 13:44:36

I think this is the real takeaway. The victims survive, the victimizers are decades dead, but we can take the lesson for next time, to try and minimize the number of next times.

David WilfordJun 23, 2014 @ 16:35:09

Reflecting on what Gary Farber has said, it’s not that Breen and the knowledge about him was buried as much as SF fandom, which was highly regional, didn’t circulate that knowledge. You started to see some chatter about it back in the days of Ye Olde Usenet, but even that was limited to a relatively small number of fans who had internet connections. Things have changed since then, obviously.

ScottJun 23, 2014 @ 11:18:06

Well said, Mr. Hines.

Jayle EnnJun 23, 2014 @ 11:20:57

Every, every, every time someone says something like ‘we need to separate the artist from the art’, they’ve meant one thing: they don’t give a damn about anything beyond their own entertainment. I’ve seen it in the comics and (video) gaming fandoms, -everyone- has seen it in the form of football players getting away with rape and their victims being treated as worse than vermin. It’s abhorrent, especially in the context of a fandom that likes to carry the conceit that it’s ‘progressive’ and ‘inclusive’, despite a virulence toward non-white, non-male fans and authors that erupts with disheartening frequency.

I think what upsets me the most is that I caught myself trying to do the same thing. It’s a lot easier to suggest to oneself that an accuser might just have an opportunity and an axe to grind, than it is to consider just how much effort it takes for a victim to work past their emotional scars and tell someone about what was done to them.

KeithMJun 23, 2014 @ 12:15:53

“Separating the artist from the work” shouldn’t mean demeaning or ignoring the victims because if you are insisting on treating both sides, the artist and the work, independently then you treat each independently and on its own merits. Everyone knows nice, genuinely good people who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone perform athletic feats, or have zero musical ability, or couldn’t write their way out of a paper bag, and most people would have no trouble saying that–perhaps not to their faces, but they’d have no trouble holding the two thoughts of “Nice person, no talent” in their heads at once.

If someone, on the other hand, has trouble with “Terrible person, real talent” as a concept, then as much as they might spout off about it, they aren’t really able to consider the two separately. It’s easier to make things black and white: the enemies we fight in a war are subhuman monsters, the politicians we disagree with are all idiots or people out to undermine the country, the terrible person who does terrible things can’t have any redeeming or admirable qualities at all. Somehow, we think it lessens us to admit that there might be something about the terrible person we actually like, and the only way to admit we like it is to lessen what a terrible person they were.

MZB, from what is finally coming out of the shadows, was a terrible, horrible, disgusting person who deserved punishment for what she did and excused, who aided and caused others to be abused, and who also happened to be a good writer and provided inspiration for a lot of other people through that writing. It should be possible to keep those two thoughts in the head at the same time. If someone is a fan of her work but can’t acknowledge that she was also apparently a poor excuse for a human being in her non-writing life, the problem isn’t with the people bringing it up, the problem is with themselves.

ChrisJun 23, 2014 @ 18:14:21

While keeping those two thoughts in your head at the same time may be valid for you, it is not for most posting here. If you cannot understand that, fine. But understand that like not wanting to see Russel Crowe movies anymore because the guy is a raging douche does not make me intellectually incompetent, it just means I don’t want to support someone I think so little of.

KeithMJun 24, 2014 @ 01:58:37

I actively avoid Card, so I do the same thing. As I said below, I have no problem for people not choosing to read a given author for any reason. I can understand why. But it’s not a symmetrical thing. What I see happening is one group saying “This person was a monster, and as a result I choose not to support their work”, while you have some other people who have spent a long time saying “The work and other stuff they did was important, they were friends of mine, therefore how dare you say they were a monster?” It’s the second group that has the problem, not the first. The first are taking a moral stance. The second are just plain denying reality.

RobJun 23, 2014 @ 20:04:25

I think you’re right, Keith, in that it is perfectly possible for someone being a terrible person and being very good at what they do. I think it is also possible to view the art separately from the artist, though it helps when more time has passed and the bad acts they committed aren’t causing ongoing pain in the world. The third component, whether to support the artist or her estate, or to continue to consume their artistic product, seems to me to be yet another separate issue. In other words, we might both agree that she’s a horrible person, and that she was talented in her chosen profession, and we might both come to entirely different conclusions as to whether or not that distinction is enough to make us stop reading her work.

KeithMJun 24, 2014 @ 01:46:13

Absolutely. I was never one of her fans: read a few pages of Avalon back in the 80s, bounced off it because it wasn’t my thing, and never picked up any of her other work. I can also understand not wanting to read anything of hers because the thought of who wrote it triggers unpleasant emotions. And choosing not to read it for any other reason, including no reason at all.

RicoJun 23, 2014 @ 13:33:00

Mr. Hines, I have a few questions for you. To preface this, I am not attempting to “show you up”, prove anything about “people like you”, or get you to say something that may turn off your fans. I merely wish to better understand the mindset and introspection of yourself and people with a similar view point. If you feel answering these questions may negatively impact you then feel free to ignore this post.

1. Do you believe the actions of MZB and Breen are anywhere close as bad as the actions of Vox Day and Larry Correia?
2. Would you say VD and Larry Correia are a greater blemish to the SCI FI community then MZB and Breen?
3. Have you seen a more vocal condemnation of Vox Day and Larry Correia or of MZB and Breen?

I’ll take you at your word that your comment isn’t intended as a setup, but I’ll also say that it very much reads that way.

My general response is that it’s comparing apples and zebras, and I see it as an utterly unproductive comparison to try to get into. I’ve seen vocal condemnations of both. I’ve also seen fandom expend tremendous time and energy condemning lens flares in the Star Trek remake. That doesn’t mean lens flares are the most important topic, that other things are somehow less important, or anything like that.

For myself, I write about things I feel are important, things I care about, things I enjoy, etc.

RicoJun 23, 2014 @ 20:44:48

Thank you for responding.

Bill ToscanoJun 23, 2014 @ 13:46:47

For those of us in the SCA, this has been very disturbing, because MZB was one of the founders, so she was always held up as someone special.

This really knocks it down.

In answer to Rico, How can you possibly compare two people who have strong opinions on specific topics with people who raped and abused little kids?

Seriously?

Whole different world.

Brian KaneJun 23, 2014 @ 15:48:33

Bill,

I think this comment left on Jim’s last Larry Correia rant expresses what Rico is getting at quite well:
Quote
Andrew
Jun 18, 2014 @ 17:20:14

Hey Jim,

I’m a survivor.

I’m trying to think of a way to say this that isn’t going to either sound like I’m an MRA or that I’m trying to invalidate the good work you do with other survivors. But I really think the way this issue has become political and how I see you contributing to that is really… uh… not okay.

I think you’re probably a good dude. I can’t imagine you not being a good dude given the amount of work you do with survivors and the depressing toll I know that work takes. BUT (I know you were probably sensing a but, and I’m sorry to have to do this in a thread where you’re already taking a pummeling) I’m going to step on your toes a bit here.

I’m doing it because I think you’ll listen and because it needs to be said.

Okay, here goes:

Why are you focusing on Larry Correia?

I just don’t get this.

At all.

Why are you responding to a piece by a guy who thinks rape is wrong and just disagrees with you on the exact nature of the problem and the solution? I’m not saying those aren’t large gaps. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s wrong about rape culture. I’m not saying I don’t think he’s wrong about education (another survivor I know actually works in those groups with those people and says its effective and I trust him, although to be honest even giving offenders that much help makes my stomach turn).

But why is Larry Correia a target?

I don’t agree with a lot of what Larry has to say, but I’ll be honest and say I still like him. He reminds me of a couple of uncles I have and some friends I used to argue with at a couple construction jobs I had. He’s really loud and says some shit I don’t agree with but you also see him actually trying to help other writers and doing stuff for charity all the time.

So, I get that you guys have serious disagreements. I get that he’s called you names. You feel attacked and that makes sense that you’d want to focus on him.

BUT (and this is what’s bugging the shit out of me): The community just found out that Marion Zimmer Bradley was a child rapist. As in, she raped children. She put her hands on kids. I’ve just found out that the community knew she was a procurer and turned a blind eye to child-rape for decades on top of all of that. And no one talks about it.

No one in the community who usually talks about this stuff is talking about this.

I was five when I was victimized. That story hit me right in the guts. I figured I’d see everyone talking about it, trying to do some agony origami and figure out what to say about it that might bring some kind of useful awareness to the community. The silence has been deafening.

I get that Larry is loud and he says things that people don’t like. But maybe fandom needs a voice like that? Before you disagree, Larry’s website is the only place I’ve heard anything even WHISPERED about Samuel R. Delany. I can’t quite seem to figure out why that is.

Samuel R. Delany was just honored at the Nebulas and quoted in NK Jemisin’s speech (I agree with a lot of what she has to say, but I just don’t get how this isn’t at least being pointed out) and Samuel R. Delany outright without any kind of doubt or apology speaks up for NAMBLA.

NAMBLA is a group that advocates grown men raping young boys.

That’s so fucked up I don’t even have words for it.

Look at his Wikipedia page. If you can stand to do it, go to NAMBLA’s website. They quote him right goddamn there.

I’m not going to say that being a male survivor is harder than being a female survivor. But I will say that when you’re a male survivor not nearly many people are willing to talk about it. Giving a pass to a guy who supports NAMBLA is not okay. It’s not okay. Focusing on Larry Correia when that shit is not being talked about is not okay.

It is not okay.

I’m hoping you didn’t know. I’m hoping NK Jemisin and K Tempest Bradford and Mary Robinette Kowal don’t know. I saw everyone tweeting happily when he won his award. Because if you guys all know and aren’t saying anything about it and maybe even turning a blind eye because it’s really hard…

Well, I’d even kind of get that.

People talk a big game until that stuff is at their doorstep and then it becomes really easy to look away. We’re all human. No one’s invincible or infallible.

This is about the ugliest thing you can look at as a person.

But it’s still not okay.

I know none of you are under any obligation to condemn Samuel R Delany or Marion Zimmber Bradley. But when you’re going to start attacking people and you choose Larry Correia….

I just don’t get this.

End quote

Jim has partly anwered by this post a MZB, but nothing on Delany. The point is that Vox Day makes racist comments and he and all his works must be shunned so if you so much as say you like one of his novellas and it deserves an award, you too are clearly a racist. Meanwhile Delany advocates for pedophiles and he is not only considered to be perfectly acceptable, he’ll be given an award. The point isn’t apples and zebras, it’s the glaring double standard.

There’s some intense conversation going on here about MZB and Breen, and the pain and anger that come from these revelations. I allowed folks a lot of commenting leeway in my response to LC. I have zero interest in letting the conversation here get derailed.

The DaveJun 23, 2014 @ 16:14:59

[I was serious when I said I have no interest in seeing the conversation here get further derailed. -Jim]

“The documentation includes eyewitness accounts of Breen molesting children and discussion that even if Breen was indeed an active pedophile, that doesn’t mean he should be expelled from fandom.”

That the discussion was resoundingly answered with “yes,” and he was barred from the Worldcon and shunned by most of fandom seems to be deemed unworthy of mention in many accounts. This is peculiar. It’s not as if this was a quiet affair; this was the biggest fight in the sf community since 1939, famously so.

It’s not a glass half-full, either. Fandom decisively barred Breen from the Worldcon and he became persona non grata in almost all of fandom. Yet by some accounts, you’d never know.

I did see that he was banned from the 1964 Pacificon/Worldcon. I also see that there was backlash against the conchair for that decision.

I’m not seeing evidence for the resounding yes you’re talking about here. Doesn’t the fact that you say this was “the biggest fight in the SF Community since 1939″ suggest it wasn’t actually a resounding or decisive yes, and that there were a lot of people arguing against Breen’s exclusion?

If there’s other information and documentation you’d like to add to the conversation, I’m more than willing to take a look.

Thanks,
Jim

David WilfordJun 23, 2014 @ 15:35:03

No, but on the subject of Breen being ostracized in all of SF&F fandom it’s not clear he was. From rec.arts.sf.fandom back in 1996:

Let’s at least present the facts so that those who sincerely want an answer can have a basis to decide. Walter Breen was “excluded” from the 1964 Worldcon by a majority vote of the Worldcon committee (a dozen people?) and blackballed from the FAPA waiting list (a minimum of 13 anonymous votes was required).

The only other people to be excluded from a Worldcon, to my knowledge, were Donald A. Wollheim, John B. Michel and their “contingent” at the 1939 Worldcon because they were communists. You only have to read a little fanhistory to realize that this was NOT a popular action–many fans who did NOT subscribe to even a socialist worldview viewed this with distaste.

You might not want to go so far as to say that the exclusion of Walter was an UNpopular act, but the fact is that at least as many prominent fans protested his exclusion by boycotting the Worldcon as cast votes against him on the committee. The exclusion _was_ a one-time-only event; Walter attended subsequent Worldcons and, perhaps only as a coincidence, within a bit more than a year, the Worldcon Chairman who had sought Walter’s exclusion, Bill Donaho, gafiated for a quarter of a century.

The FAPA blackball, however, had only been used previously to remove George Wetzel and several of his pen names from the waiting list. But I think an important point here is that it took 33 of FAPA’s 65 members [or actually 33 out of the remaining 52 who had not cast blackballs], acting openly (i.e., signing their names) to override the blackball and reinstate Walter–but they did manage to do that, nonetheless.

Now to be totally honest, it is perfectly true that Walter died in prison accused of being a child molester–the same charge the Worldcon committee used to “justify” his exclusion. But that is something which happened outside of fandom and more than a quarter of a century later as well.

Given the above facts–and any you might are to add, if you think I’ve presented just one side–it’s still possible to pose this question and expect an answer: Was Walter Breen universally ostracized by fandom-as-a-whole or even by a simple majority of fandom? If you think there is even the _slightest_ chance that the answer to this is “yes,” I’m afraid I’ll need either a detailed explanation or, at the very least, certification that you can count without taking off your shoes.

This photo was also taken at a con, but it’s mislabeled LA Con I in 1972, which was in Anaheim. That pool is at the Doubletree San Jose (formerly a Red Lion). I’m not sure exactly when this was, but it sure appears to be much later than 5 years after the Westercon pic. It’s possibly Westercon 1983, which happened at this hotel. Or later.

“We need to constantly remind people they don’t have the right to claim confidentiality or copyright over their emails and social media posts to hide their written abuse, slander and libel.”

Er, people do have that legal right, at least in the United States. Not over social media, of course, but very much over their emails. You can be successfully sued for violating copyright on someone’s emails to you. It would be a costly court fight, but the law is clear that it’s a violation of copyright without permission.

As I said when you went on my facebook wall to make this post to me (then claiming I did not reply to your concerns):
My comments were not in the context of making money out of stealing the work of others. My comments were in the context of appropriately blowing the whistle so that appropriate behaviours are enforced including abusive emails exposed. If you read Dark Matter Zine’s Privacy Policy and Disclaimer, you will notice that Australia has laws against harassment and abuse via the internet; this is an issue I’ve faced repeatedly. You will notice my terms and conditions and disclosure around this topic.

It is unlikely that my comments may be interpreted to mean “go, make money by stealing other people’s writing” because, in that context, it’s about exposing illegal conduct.

You facebooked me raising concerns about what I said on Jim C. Hines’s post. In Australia we have legislation about Whistleblowing and legislation making it an offense to harass people via the internet. It is LEGAL to expose people’s mail to the appropriate authorities – police, lawyers, court, appropriate agents AND EVEN CONVENTION ORGANISERS TO MAKE A FORMAL COMPLAINT. Thus confidentiality and copyright do not protect perpetrators.

In conclusion: I am NOT advocating theft of people’s work for selfish publication. I SPECIFICALLY STATED that perpetrators have no right to expect claims of copyright or confidentiality to protect them from their abuse coming to light. These are two very different statements.

“I’m not seeing evidence for the resounding yes you’re talking about here.”

There weren’t any polls; I don’t know how to submit the overwhelming body of fannish opinion in the late sixties as evidence. Yes, there absolutely was a continuing minority of opinion, including very much by some prominent and loud voices in the sf community, of whom it’s likely fair to say Ted White was one, continued to support Walter, and a handful of survivors of Walter’s side are still around, such as Arnie Katz.

But anyone familiar with the fanhistory and the zines, even if they weren’t around until later (I didn’t get into fandom and start reading fanhistory until circa 1971-73), can vouch for the fact that after 1964, Walter largely vanished — not 100%, but close, from fandom, and the majority opinion was vast relief. I don’t know how to “prove” this was the case, but it was. Is there some sort of evidence that you’d regard as dispositive one way or another? Aside from asking most people around at the time or with close knowledge from the aftermath?

That a thread of defense of Walter by his friends continued after 1964, I agree absolutely. But I can’t see that it was much more than ~15% of fandom by 1966, or more than 5%-10% at most by 1971.

We’re only talking about a few hundred people in total, mind.

I realize it’s difficult for people who haven’t read the vast majority of fanzines of the time to find evidence one or or another for any of the events of fandom of the Sixties or Seventies.

I can point to the absence of any consistent evidence of Walter having been honored or walking through fandom controversy-free subsequent to 1964 and I can simply urge anyone interested to go read as many of the zines of the 1960s and decide for themselves. Walter gafiated after 1964 and was never honored thereafter, and largely was never seen in general fandom again; certainly not in any prominent way.

That’s just what happened.

As I said, I really have the impression a lot of people are getting a different impression entirely of what happened, and it’s concerning me somewhat. The Breendogle was a horrible thing, but that’s why it’s remembered as the most horrible fight in the sf community of all time. It’s hardly as if it was swept under the rug; it couldn’t have been a noisier event; it was the nuclear explosion of fandom of 20th century.

David WilfordJun 23, 2014 @ 16:07:43

Point taken, Gary. I think for those who were involved in the controversy back in 1964 or were fairly well-connected in fandom that Breen’s reputation was known. But a lot of fans like me who date from the latter 1970s never knew about him, which I suppose in a way is evidence of his diminished involvement.

Oh, absolutely rich brown was certainly in the top three surviving pro-Breen voices. He’s been dead a good number of years now, but absolutely he was still writing up history as pro-Walter. I can link to a zine from this year by Arnie Katz doing the same.

The point is I can give the names of pretty much every surviving pro-Walter voice. Although the only two prominent ones left I can think of are Ted and Arnie and a smattering of their circle, few of whom were around at the time.

I should point out that what rich brown acknowledge to be “fandom” was a group not larger than ~500 in total, period.

If you weren’t active in written, physically printed, fanzines, you weren’t a fan in rich’s emphatic and constantly-stated view.

It’s crucial that when you read rich’s account of who was a minority and majority in “fandom” that you keep in mind that to rich brown, only a couple of hundred people attending a Worldcon were “real” fans. Everyone else didn’t count; their opinions weren’t the opinions of “sf fans,” but merely people who were active in sf conventions and sf clubs, or later, on the internet. That was never, in rich’s view, “real” fandom.

Thanks for context to your comments, which modifies what I wrote above (I hadn’t scrolled down this far when I wrote it).

D. D. WebbJun 23, 2014 @ 16:04:41

Well put.

Laura BurchardJun 23, 2014 @ 16:41:07

Except that’s not true, Gary. Walter Breen continued to be welcome at conventions; he chased Mary Mason’s son all over Westercon in 1985, and she and her husband were told by multiple major fandom figures that it was perfectly safe. Even after his arrest for raping Mary’s son, Moira Greyland had to call the police to get him out of a Baycon, because the organizers let him attend.

That Worldcon was the _only_ convention he was barred from, and even Donaho apparently caved and decided the ban shouldn’t have happened. There was a grand collective lie promulgated that he just had an arrest years ago and it was probably all homophobia anyway, rather than the fact that he publicly assaulted children in front of other fans and that his regular rape of a 10 year old was dismissed with a fandom joke about bicycles.

Laura, I think there’s a definitional issue here. Gary’s talking about the senior ranks of Worldcon fandom, including fanzine fandom, rather than conventions and convention goers generally.

Laura BurchardJun 23, 2014 @ 23:12:34

Except that Rich Brown, who Gary himself says had if anything an even narrower view of fandom, just fanzines and Worldcon, says this, in *1996*:

“Given the above facts–and any you might are to add, if you think I’ve presented just one side–it’s still possible to pose this question and expect an answer: Was Walter Breen universally ostracized by fandom-as-a-whole or even by a simple majority of fandom? If you think there is even the _slightest_ chance that the answer to this is “yes,” I’m afraid I’ll need either a detailed explanation or, at the very least, certification that you can count without taking off your shoes.”

In other words, one of the most senior fans of that group says that he was not ostracized. And we have another clue; FAPA, perhaps the most prestigious fanzine. 13 members voted to ban Breen; *33* voted to override that. So that suggests that less than 2/3ds of “senior fandom” thought Breen was a problem.

wendyJun 23, 2014 @ 17:22:02

I was shocked and saddened when I learned the news late last week. MZB’s work was an important part of my discovering science fiction and fandom well I discovered it as a young teen. Now I’m just horrified.

I’m even more horrified to learn to read it with an open secret among so many people in fandom and the SCA and I never knew. I don’t know if I can ever bring myself to read any of them again.

But I disagree with those who say that we shouldn’t talk about it because it’s in the past. We need to talk about it. We need to support the victims and validate their feelings. And we need to work to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. Because I don’t care who you are, or what you know, or how long you’ve been around

“Several years ago, a former SCA member named Ben Schragger was convicted of the sexual abuse of multiple children that he allegedly met through the SCA. He was sentenced and is currently serving a 62-year prison sentence. The Board, of course, permanently revoked his SCA membership.”

Lorelei SkyeJun 24, 2014 @ 09:12:27

Deirdre-

First- I want to be clear, I am not an official spokesperson for the SCA in any capacity.
But I do think I am okay to ring in on a correction to this comment about the ‘Ben the Steward’/Ben Schragger case:
The “recent” document you linked to? Is from 28 months ago – February 2012.
When the SCA settled an ongoing lawsuit from 2009 with a $1.3mil settlement, and included a statement of ‘no fault’.

To a general member like me reading about the case and the aftermath, this was a convoluted mess. And was not the first time the group tried to go after the SCA and members for damages. As you can read about in the document you linked to, as well as the comprehensive FAQ docment also provided by the Board of Directors.

SCA Complicity? No.
Case Complicated? Yes

MZB may have been one of the founders of the SCA. But IMO she is/was several degrees removed from the case you quoted here.

The SCA has also made a lot of policy and practice changes in recent years, especially around protecting the under 18 membership, as well as to more clearly define what is or is not an ‘official’ SCA activity, and ‘official’ lines of communication.

Lorelei Skye,
(SCA general member/populace,
Not an official anything for the SCA)

You’re right — it does refer to future events that will happen in 2012.

I’m glad to hear the SCA is doing a better job than in the founding days.

Kimberly WinrotteJun 25, 2014 @ 00:40:47

Yeah, uh, the founding days were also in the 1960’s. A lot has changed EVERYWHERE since then. Just sayin’.

SiduriJun 25, 2014 @ 09:06:56

Conflating MZB’s involvement in the organization fifty years ago, with an abuse scandal that broke long after MZB had moved onto other things (and subsequently died), smacks of fallacy, or laziness, or both.

There’s this thing called the Law of Large Numbers. In any given group of reasonable size, no matter what the nature or stated core values of the group —geeky, freaky, mainstream, religious, Boy Scouts, 4-H Clubs — there is going to be an outside risk that it contains predators. No group is immune. Vigilance certainly helps, but it is not 100% foolproof.

Some, like Walter Breen, wear their freakiness on their sleeve. He had “priors” going back to the 50’s, and allegedly fondled and sexualized children *right in front* of other adults. In certain parts of fandom his proclivities seemed to be a sort of open secret, received with either disbelief, looking the other way, fear of confrontation since he was A Big Name, and (god forbid) “well that’s just ‘his kink’, who am I to judge” — and a handful of people who tried to put a stop to it, with mixed degrees of success.

Most predators, OTOH, are not so sloppy. They do not wear signs and are careful to cover their tracks. Otherwise prosecutors’ jobs would be a hell of a lot easier.

When the Ben Schragger case broke, the adults of the SCA were collectively gobsmacked. No one — NO ONE — saw it coming. There was no slime-trail, no tingling group “spider sense”, no waffling about “well that’s just ‘his kink’, who am I to judge” etc. Vetting in advance would have accomplished nothing, as he had no priors.

One wonders if you have even bothered to read the details of the Schragger case at all. If not, such comparisons are highly irresponsible.

Unless the SCA case is directly relevant to MZB and her daughter’s revelations, I’m going to ask that we let this particular comment subthread die. Thanks!

VickiJun 23, 2014 @ 18:24:38

I am not a lawyer either, but there is a crucial difference between confidentiality and copyright. You can’t copyright facts, only the way you describe those facts: that can be a written text, a speech, a movie, a photograph, any number of formats. I don’t have the right to reproduce the famous photo of the South Vietnamese police officer shooting a suspected member of the Viet Cong in the head. But I do have the right to describe what happened in my own words.

The other crucial difference is that copyright used to be something that a creator could claim by following a procedure available to anyone; it’s now automatic when a work is created. Confidentiality applies to specific information and kinds of information. I own the copyright on this post, automatically. But even if it was a private email instead, you would have the legal right to tell people “Vicki sent me an email talking about the difference between copyright and confidentiality, and mentioning a Pulitzer-winning photo from the Vietnam war, and I don’t know what she thinks she’s trying to prove by it.”

Unless there are things like nondisclosure agreements or certain government contracts, “I am telling you this in confidence” is a request, not binding on the person you’re talking to.

Pam AdamsJun 23, 2014 @ 19:16:48

I was a fan during the 1980’s and, while not a pro myself, was married to one. I do not recall hearing this about either MZB or Breen during that time. It was easy for a lot of us to just not see what was in front of our faces.

For what I didn’t see and didn’t do, I apologize.

Milt StevensJun 23, 2014 @ 19:47:16

I was around at the time of the Boondoggle (1964). I agree with Gary Farber that Breen was gone from fandom within a couple of years after 1964. Active fighting went on from 1964 to 1968 in FAPA, the Cult, TAFF, and just about everyplace else. TAFF the Trans Atlantic Fan Fund had one year with Walter Breen, Bill Donaho, and Terry Carr as candidates. It was quite reasonable that Terry Carr won. From my viewpoint, the fighting had ended by the 1968 worldcon in Berkeley. I felt like sighing with relief that the long war was over. I think most people no longer cared what happened as long as the conflict ended. There was no effort to cover things up. We just never felt like mentioning it again.

I will try to summarize the sides in the conflict. Remember it was 50 years ago, and people didn’t think the way they do today about certain issues.

Many people thought the worldcon actions in 1964 were wrong. Some pointed out the woldcon committee is not a judicial body and not suited to prosecuting crime. Some thought the matter should have been taken to the police. Some pointed out that Walter’s guilt had not been proven.

Bill Donaho was widely known to be gay. That was still illegal in those days, and he didn’t want any contact with law enforcement. Fandom at the time was tolerant of homosexuality, promiscuity, and drug use. There were other people who wouldn’t have welcomed police scrutiny. Some people didn’t think Donaho was in a very strong position to be giving moral lectures.

Some people believed Walter was innocent. Walter and Marion had friends in fandom, and you don’t want to believe your friends have done wrong. When Walter was convicted I accepted that the matter was finally resolved beyond doubt. I never officially took a position on the matter. I thought there were more than enough people willing to fight about the matter.

anglerfish07Jun 23, 2014 @ 21:03:32

To Milt Stevens,

The point is – at the end of the day, MZB’s and Breen’s crimes are horrifying and inexcusable. It is always important to support victims of child sexual assault. It is always important to take a stand.

Jayle’s honesty should be appreciated, in that she admits she found herself tempted to turn the same blind eye. We all have a great deal of genetically programmed social behaviors, and we all tend to identify with/side with authority figures/celebrities. Doing the right thing is hard work, and takes a lot of honest self-examination. Which is why it’s so rare.

I never heard any of this before this week. In 1964 I was 13 and had never heard of fandom. I joined in 1976. It’s easy to say the scandal had passed into history by then but. . . MZB was still a big name. I saw her books on all the dealers tables. Nobody ever said to me, “Didn’t you hear about the scandal?” Apparently nobody stopped buying her books in distaste. So, yeah, I would say that fandom did ‘cover’ for her. I’m sorry about that.

wendyJun 24, 2014 @ 14:58:05

That’s kind of my reaction too. I started reading her books in the 70s as a young teen but didn’t get into the fandom and the SCA until the mid 80s. I first heard of this last week.

I totally get the “not wanting to believe ill of your friends” – I defended someone who turned out to be a serial abuser until the third woman I know said the same thing and I saw the same bruises. I felt like a complete idiot, and not only confronted him and told him why I never wanted to see or talk to him ever again, but I also went to each of the women whose pain I ignored and apologized. So I’m guessing many people who knew about these crimes felt the same way. They had the luxury of refusing to see what was going on under their noses. This is not to defend, but to explain.

As horribly uncomfortable as this is all to us, I hope that the fact that this is finally coming out brings some measure of comfort and vindication to the vicitms. I also hope that looking at ourselves and our culture is leading to asking ourselves some very hard questions and doing our best to keep things like this from happening again.

MattJun 23, 2014 @ 22:08:52

Two things I was thinking about:

1. Stephen Goldin has been telling everyone about MZB and what she did for 14 years. I don’t understand what took everyone so damn long to get outraged over this.

2. There was comment here earlier asking Jim if he thought MZB was worse that Larry Correia (and Vox). Obviously, Jim was wise enough to not open that can of worms but…

Come on guy, what do you think?

Larry Correia may not be to everyones liking (politically or otherwise) but he’s NOT A FRIGGING CHILD MOLESTER! I know nothing about Vox Day, so I can’t really comment on him, but I’ve never heard him being accused of raping his own damn kid.

The Bradley issue is (and should be) bigger than the current left/right feud.

To the best of my knowledge, Moira Greyland hadn’t spoken out about the abuse perpetrated by her mother until this month, which is a significant part of where the outrage is coming from and why it’s coming out now.

Well, what opened this can of worms now was the Tor.com piece on MZB’s birthday, which I responded to, and it’s gone on for almost three weeks at this point. Moira had never spoken publicly about this before, and I broke that on June 10th.

In looking back at the context of why I missed this in 1999: I contracted for five different companies that year (moving to the bay area between #2 and #3), spoke at some big conferences like O’Reilly’s Open Source Conference, was co-author of a bug smasher computer book AND was in grad school for my MS in CS.

So that’s why I missed it; I was just too busy and not highly focused on MZB generally. I read the depositions in 2011 when Goldin wanted to speak at Westercon and I looked at his site.

MattJun 23, 2014 @ 22:24:13

Also, good for Moira Greyland for speaking up. I imagine it can’t be easy to admit that anyone molested you, let alone to publicly admit that your own mother, who happens to be a beloved author, did.

Pardon the phrase, but that’s showing some balls right there.

___Jun 24, 2014 @ 12:18:45

Reading the testimonies, it seems she did tell Elisabeth Waters.
And got no help or support or any reaction at all.
I can imagine it didn’t gave her much hope of being believed or helped, and explain why it took her so long to go public with the abuse !

What Waters described herself doing with that info, in her deposition, was going to Breen and to Bradley to ask them about it. And then dropping the subject forever.

So one also wonders if, in addition to no one helping that child, she also experienced repercussions inside that household once her parents learned she had confided to someone.

wendyJun 24, 2014 @ 15:01:17

I agree. When I first tweeted out about this, the first thing I said was “And all my best wishes to Moira. We’re listening now”.

Sean O'HaraJun 23, 2014 @ 23:31:29

When Roman Polanski received an Oscar nomination for the Pianist, there were heated arguments in film fan circles about whether he should be allowed into the US for the ceremony, but the issue didn’t get much traction in the media — when they did report it, they made it sound like he was being kept out for some long forgotten misdemeanor. Five years later the US tried to extradite him from Switzerland, Whoopi Goldberg made her infamous “rape rape” comment and suddenly people paid attention to what he’d done. Nothing had changed, but the story came at the right point in the news cycle for it to find traction, and Goldberg’s comment gave sites like Gawker something to dig into.

The same thing’s happening here. The links to Goldin’s site have been circulating for years, but it took the Tor post (and its removal) to get enough people to read the depositions for there to be discussion.

MattJun 23, 2014 @ 22:21:09

I guess I didn’t find it all that shocking to discover that a person who lied for and defended her child molesting husband’s actions was involved herself. But really, I think the fact that she stood by and let stuff like happen already made her a pretty terrible person in my eyes.

It also sickens me to think that other people in the sci-fi community were aware of what was happening and just ignored it.

Combine that with some of the attitudes in the Breendoggle issue was well as the statements from long-time fans here in the comments about where the state of mind was as far as central fandom went — and you can put together that they thought nothing was awry.

If you read the court depositions from the 1990s lawsuit filed by one of Breen’s victims, it’s clearly stated in the Elisabeth Waters Q&A that Moira Greyland, as a young child, made specific statements to Waters about being physically and sexually abused by her parents. It is equally clear that nothing was done about these statements. I don’t know any of the people involved and don’t know what happened; but I believe those circumstances–(1) legal testimony from (2) an MZB ally revealing that MZB’s daughter, (3) when she was a young child, stated to an adult she knew that she was being physically and sexually abused, and (4) no one did anything about this–undeniably lend weight and credibility to what Moira Greyland and her brother Mark Greyland have recently stated as adults about being abused as children.

And considering Breen’s history (3 criminal convictions for child molestation over a period of 36 years, the Breendoggle scandal, the civil suit, etc.), and considering MZB’s own shocking words about herself, in statement after statement, in her deposition in the civil suit… The notion that a child in that household fabricated her allegations or misunderstood innocent parental behavior strikes me as the least credible of the possible explanations for what the girl confided to Waters all those years ago.

As for “separating the artist from the art…” That’s too abstract a question for me. I know that I can’t sit through a Mel Gibson movie, because all I can see onscreen now is a drunk spewing anti-Semitic vitriol. it’s not a conscious decisions, it’s just what I see. So I don’t watch Gibson movies. Nor will I ever again attempt an MZB novel, since I will always hereafter “hear” the voice of the person in that appalling court deposition, regardless of what story her novel is telling. But these are organic reactions. I don’t have a philosophy about it.

One of the things I find the most curious about the whole MZB and Lisa Waters relationship is how much Lisa downplays the fact that she was Marion’s SO. (After all, it would even be more weird for a “secretary” to inherit half the estate and the kids be disinherited, but it makes somewhat more sense if the secretary’s the SO.)

MZB’s official bio on the mzbworks.com site doesn’t list Breen at all nor any personal relationship with Lisa.

Well, having lately read her legal deposition, some of her statements since then, and some of her more recent blog posts, there’s a lot I find extremely strange. But not her apparent preference to remain private about a private relationship.

That’s a valid point. And I’ve been so inundated with it that the bad stuff has seemed too horrible to be strange, so my mind sticks on other aspects.

All the revelations have caused me to question so much over the last three weeks. So many conversations. So many heartbreaking details. So many survivors of childhood sexual assault sharing their stories on my blog.

Laura’s point is well taken. We speak of separating the art from the artists, but these decisions are not made on the rational level. Few people make a conscious choice to avoid an artist that they previously admired when they discover unpleasant truths about them. Usually they are–or are not–sufficiently disturbed that they are left with a permanent emotional aversion. Like not being able to eat tomatoes again after that time they made you so sick. Sometimes, of course, the unpleasant truth is less hideous than incestuous pedophilia, and dismissing the flaws of the artist for the sake of the work is easier and more understandable. But in cases this extreme, the persons who make that argument–presumably those that present themselves as having chosen the art–are usually those that are actually choosing the artist. (There are, after all, lots of books out there. MZB was popular but not a game changer.) They have an emotional commitment that persuades them to override, or deny, the unpleasant truth.

Time makes a difference, too. Whether this is rational or just rationalizing, learning that an artist whose work I like abandoned spouse and children in the 17th century probably wouldn’t affect my enjoyment of the artist’s work, whereas it very likely would if the artist were working (and abandoning the family) in my own lifetime. Time would probably make the first instance seem too remote to change my view of the art and too immediate in the second instance NOT to change it. I don’t know where the exact dividing line on that would be (1758? 1985?) because, again, it’s an organic reaction rather than a philosophical or intellectual position.

nmJun 24, 2014 @ 16:56:48

I think it also depends, to a great extent, on which came first, the knowledge of the artist’s personal faults, or the experience of the art. If I learned today that my favorite writer was a murderer, a rapist, a torturer, I would have to rethink all that writer’s works. BUT I would already have had the experience of loving them — and the past enjoyment would not disappear, no matter how much less I valued them in the future. Whereas, if someone recommended a writer who I already knew to be one of those things, I’d have a much harder time approaching the books without that knowledge, and without being influenced by it.

On the off chance that anyone does want to go back to re-read MZB to see if these issues are in her work, I do have an open question based on my own one-novel read and several others’ descriptions of her books.

My standing question: which of her works pass the Bechdel test, and which do not? I know Mists of Avalon is frequently cited as a book that passes.

About 25 years ago, when I was much easier to please as a reader than I am now, I tried THE MISTS OF AVALON. I disliked the writing so much that I quit after a few chapters and never tried her work again. Recently reading her deposition has ensured that I will never try it in future, either.

I haven’t checked, because I rather dislike the strong gender essentialism in that book, but I think it’s likely that “Mists of Avalon” passes the test.

What haunts me, however, is that there is a depiction of child rape in “The Mists of Avalon”. The setting of the scene is a fertility rite. Morgaine, the protagonist we are meant to sympathize with, is specifically mentioned as hearing the child scream and doing nothing. The rape itself is explained by the narrator’s voice (subjective third-person view with limited knowledge) as being caused by a divine force that has overcome both the victim and the offender. This description should be taken with a grain of salt, insofar as I only ever read “The Mists of Avalon” in German, and haven’t compared the translation with the original text. But I’m pretty sure it doesn’t amount to much difference between texts. In any case, I couldn’t find any kind of condemnation of the act expressed in the narrative.

For me, this makes it rather difficult to ‘seperate the art from the artist’. You cannot read, for example, “The Horror at Red Hook” and not know that Lovecraft was a racist. Now I feel that you can’t read “The Mists of Avalon” and not know that MZB was an apologist of child rape even in her fiction.

This is where I feel like my having read Arthurian stuff early (pre-Mists publication) works to my detriment, because I’m not an Arthurian scholar. There was some really squicksome stuff in Arthurian lore, and I don’t know if this is the author or the underlying legends.

So I don’t feel I can judge that as harshly as you feel you can, but I would not be reading a book where I knew there was a scene like that.

I’m really just an amateur when it comes to Arthurian lore (big fan of “The Once and Future King” though), but I’m sure the rape element isn’t from the source matter. Both characters, the victim and the offender, are nameless and specifically made up for the scene in which the rape occurs.

However, there is an element from the legends* in the same scene: the incest between Arthur and his half-sister, which in “The Mists of Avalon” occurs right after the rape.

I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I weren’t sure that the rape element is MZB’s invention. Always better to be careful when it comes to attributing characters’ or narrators’ feelings and opinions to the author! But in this case I think it’s pretty clear: The rape (taking place during a fertility rate) is presented as something that is expected to happen when people celebrate their ‘divine’ sexuality, and as entirely justified in this context. It specifically isn’t condoned, while the incest taking place in the same scene is condoned later.

* You are definitely right about the squicksome stuff, not only in Arthurian lore, but in all kinds of other mythic and legendary stuff as well. I’m a Bible scholar, and I readily admit the Bible is not really an exception here.

I read to MZB novels. Or rather 1 1/2. I read a Darkover. I forget which one. It was okay. I didn’t hate it. Neither was I inspired to read another. I tried to read Mists of Avalon. I found the writing pulpy, but the reason I put it down was that, as a serious student of Arthurian legend, I was just appalled–and offended–at what she had done to the canon.

The Free Amazon trilogy (Shattered Chain, Thendara House, City of Sorcery) will certainly pass. Stormqueen. The Forbidden Tower. MZB and Lisa Waters’ short story “The Keeper’s Price” and its sequel “The Lesson of the Inn” will both pass. I think the latter actually has no named male characters at all.

I’d be quite surprised if any of the first six Darkover books passed, since they’re classic 1950s-style male-viewpoint space-opera/fantasy adventure stories with few female characters at all.

There may well be others among her 1970s-1990s works, but while I am not throwing away her books, I am really not inclined to do any rereads right now.

Tara QJun 24, 2014 @ 22:32:59

SCA member, heard about the MZB/Breen horrors when the 2009 case hit because this was instantly tied to it. In Lisa Waters’ ‘defense’, she asks that people read MZB’s books to see her position on child rape. I have read them, and one scene instantly popped into my head that gave me chills. In ‘Hawkmistress’, there’s a scene with an adult male feeling up what he believes to be a young, teenage boy, and the only reason he stopped was because the boy was actually a girl. When I was very young, I thought it was a brave move, to write homosexuality into a book even in passing. As I grew older, the age difference between the characters really began to bother me, but I wrote it off as period-specific norms. After the 2009 case hit and I learned about MZB/Breen, it made me get rid of the MZB books on my shelf. Reading Lisa’s comment in her ‘defense’ piece instantly brought this to mind, and made me wonder if it was something else entirely. Seeing devils behind doors, so to speak, but now wondering if the author was trying to create a social norm that would ..excuse?.. her husband’s (and hers) disturbing sexual preference for young children.

Sandi MacJun 25, 2014 @ 10:18:07

While to do believe it is wrong and evil to have sex with children and they should be shot if caught doing so ,bring back death penalty for murder and rape/ rape of children, i do believe sum women are so in love with their partners,that they believe anything they say, in some family situations , i have know this to be the case, other times the mother believes their child with out question.Sum cases have been proven that the parent wasn’t raping or touching the child, but the child lying so she would never go to the father and new wife house ever again.Also the news & media does also exaggerate things,there’s always two stories,it’s sad and unless you really know the truth from that person ,which i do not and have not seen any interviews or such,i will not judge any one til i know the facts.
Child sex has been going on for centuries,back in Roman days,children having children is part of many cultures, I do believe no child under 16 at least should have sex,that’s just my opinion .I haven’t read any of her ( MZB’S) books ,but i like and have seen Mists of Avalon movie many times. So i feel for the daughter,no one should suffer this. i speak with experience ..i forgave,but i will never forget ..sadly . a lot of people don’t. It’s a very sad situation.

Sandi, perhaps you’ve just been skimming the remarks here (which are voluminous by now) but it has been pointed out a number of times that this is NOT the case of a woman disbelieving the accusations against her beloved spouse. This is a case of a woman who–by her own admission–supported and participated in his actions.

Well, I hadn’t thought I’d be commenting but I guess I am. I didn’t like the little of Mists of Avalon I read, but I loved the hell out of Darkover in the late 70s and early 80s, though it was clear it had passed its peak. After the early experiments when it wasn’t yet worked out (by her own admission MZB kept few notes), there was a string of really vivid, gripping stories on one of the most thoroughly imagined SF worlds ever; for competition in vivid worldbuilding and history building you really have to go to Kim Stanley Robinson, C.J.Cherryh, Frank Herbert.

When humans arrive on Darkover (through some weird timewarpy thing the lost colony ship that crashes there has been thrown so far back into the past that it’s roughly contemporary with the last Ice Age on Earth), there are at least five sapient species there and all are telepathic to some degree, plus what appear to be telepathic apes or sasquatches, and there have been multiple rises and falls. Something in the air/soil whatever, I don’t know if she ever explained it, makes the humans start turning telepathic too.

Now here’s the creepy thing about it in retrospect: the telepathy effectively blurs all the boundaries of consent (and also, everyone seems to be into having sex with all the other species). No can mean yes because the telepathic aggressor knows what the victim “really” wants, strong telepaths can change weak telepaths minds about it, etc. Moreover, one very delicate physically small species that through a combination of similarity and telepathic suggestion is able to infiltrate humankind and “pass” as women or children, has odd genitalia that are quite small, must be handled very carefully, etc. and is also extremely submissive, and in the book I remember, has a definite urge, or at least some of them do, to have sex with human males.

I heard about Breen very early on compared to most, maybe the mid 1970s, because I was going to cons and I was a teenager and it was just floated around that “hey, you’re too old for this creepy guy but if you see him moving on a younger kid, give a holler to the con authorities and DON’T let it get out of your sight and it’s NOT harmless.” I don’t remember which fan specifically tipped me to it, it would have been in Cleveland, Detroit or Columbus, and I don’t think Breen was at any conventions; it was part of a general warning.

I remember with disgust that I used to feel so sorry for poor Marion, stuck with such a horrible husband.

I don’t think I’ll re-read Darkover again. I think that any good influence it had has been had, and that my memories of it are almost certainly better than what it would be like now, anyway. But mainly there is a lurking little voice in the back of my head saying, no, no, no. Everything good you ever loved would be spoiled.

I remember hearing something about MZBs ex husband being a child molester years ago (around the time of her death), but I assumed it was something few people knew about at the time, and it was one of those things where the spouse buried her head in the sand. Reprehensible, but hardly unusual. Learning the whole story just makes me sick, and it breaks my heart to learn that much of the SFF fantasy community has been no better than Hollywood and pro sports in this regard.

I think there are arguments that can be made for separating artists as people from their work, but not when they molest kids. I read a few of her books when I was younger. They weren’t among my favorites, but even if they had been, I couldn’t stomach re-reading anything by her now. I hope her and Walter Breen’s victims have been able to find the support and healing they need to live good, healthy lives.

AKelleyJun 24, 2014 @ 09:04:16

I’m a practicing artist, and I have a hard time with people saying to separate the artist from the art.

In my observation, the artist always leaves an imprint on the art.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books are riddled with rape, pedophilia, and pedophilia apologism. As a young person I was very uncomfortable with them and drifted away from them, no matter how vehemently they were recommended, towards authors without creepster elements.

No amount of appealing artistic elements, to my mind, can provide enough sugar coating to sweeten a work by a child rapist and enabler.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is accused of raping children. By her own admission she abused her own children and knew children were being raped in her house and did not care, made excuses for it even. Her art makes excuses for raping children. The fannish community around her knew of the last parts, even if they were blind to the first.

For all intents and purposes, local fandom rallied around MZB and Breen, one side supporting them and the other not talking about it. (Robert A. Heinlein left fandom after the Breendoggle for the opposite of a moral reason, because he was incensed at *critics* of Breen.) The result was a mutually agreed-upon conspiracy of silence, one which provided comfort, security, and an agreeable social position for child rapists.

It seems to me that is is a long-smothered issue which desperately needs airing.

Thank you for writing this, Jim. I was a fan during that time, and had no idea. I work with charities and lobbies to protect children from predators, and SF fans managed to hide this better than the Vatican with a rapist priest.

Thank for writing this…I am utterly sickened. I had one book by MZB in my home, I just threw it away. Those who knew and were silent, you are as guilty as the twisted freaks that commit the offenses. Shame on you.

QuinallaJun 24, 2014 @ 10:40:53

Thank you for writing this, it is the first I have heard of this and it is so sad and infuriating. I feel so sorry for their victims and so pissed that it sounds like yet another instance of fandom falling down on its ass (though not completely based on what folks have said, but still, mostly). And as another who found the Sword & Sorceress series and books written by MZB at a young age, I’m sad that they were written by someone who did such horrible things. I can sometimes separate art from artist, but I don’t think I will be able to in this case.

It is very easy to put people up on pedestals instead of remembering they are humans too, but this is well beyond that. MZB & Walter Breen were predators and we have a responsibility to do whatever we can to not protect predators in sci-fi/fantasy/geek fandom!

RuthJun 24, 2014 @ 11:00:58

This is all new to me as a reader of sff. I have read a good bit of MZB’S work. Some of it I really enjoyed, but there was a very dark element to a lot of her work that I found very disturbing. As far as the Sword & Sorceress anthologies, most of the works were by other authors. I will not condemn those books as I saw one poster comment.

I think the Internet is playing a large part in the publicizing of these incidents at this time. It should be noted that I was not even born or reading during the dates being mentioned.

I am curious whether her children benefit from sales of her work financially. I certainly think they deserve to, but there was a mention of them having been disinherited.

Since this question has come up, I don’t want to speak with authority since many of you are far more informed than me, but isn’t it true that the current beneficiary of sales from MZB’s work is Elizabeth Waters?

If so and if where money from sales of these books goes to matters to anyone, Waters does come across as a major enabler of these crimes in the testimonies if I recall.

Without pretending to know the entire circumstances, and without disclosing anything I’ve learned that needs to remain confidential, it’s a lot more complicated than that. There were some… failures of estate planning, I think, is the most-neutral way I can put it… that resulted in significant Shifting of Things.

Laura BurchardJun 24, 2014 @ 12:47:35

Moira herself has confirmed that she and her brother do not benefit from the Trust that controls the works, and that Lisa Waters does. Unless you are going to put up details, I am going to go with that; she may be unaware of complex details due to not being a benefitee, but I think she’s probably pretty clear on whether she and Mark get any money.

When this recently erupted, I had questioned why “not supporting” Bradley’s work was a viable argument, since she was long dead and certainly not benefiting. At the time, I hadn’t known what her estate was doing with the revenue, but now that I know where it’s going, or at least half of it, my feelings on that particular issue are rather different.

I see an awful lot of bad binary reasoning in this thread, with no acknowledgement whatsoever of the Aristotelian fallacy, a.k.a. the false dilemma or law of the excluded middle. And it’s warping the entire conversation and making communication and learning impossible.

In this thread, it is the rhetorical and illusory line between “evil and must be shunned and made an Unperson” and “a shining example to be emulated for generations to come.” If I may, I’m going to use a less-emotional example from politics to illustrate the danger of that kind of thinking.(note 1) Richard Nixon did incredible, perhaps irreparable damage to the institution of the presidency and to partisanship; virtually everything that we see wrong with the Tea Party movement (or, I suppose, depending on one’s perspective, everything that is right about the Tea Party movement) can be traced rather directly — in concept, in methods, even in personnel — to the Nixon White House between 1970 and 1974. Indeed, Nixon had been a supporter of evil long before then, when he was one of the biggest movers in the Army-McCarthy hearings… on the wrong side of ethics and history. But Nixon also gave us the Clean Water Act; he funded enforcement of the Voting Rights Act; he reopened China to communication (for good or for ill, but failure to communicate would probably have been worse); he was actually the most-liberal President of the last half of the 20th century, if measured by his actual accomplishments. (Not very liberal, but it’s shocking how ill-founded Carter’s and Clinton’s programs were… and the less said about Kennedy and Johnson as “liberals” the better.)

All of that said, I can’t forgive Nixon for his undoubted attraction to evil and power as a man. Neither, however, can I entirely neglect the policy-level good he did, nor the power of his intellect on foreign-to-the-US affairs (Kissinger was not, contrary to later rewriting of history, the brains of the operation).

So what does this have to do with the above? Two things:
(1) We can despise child-rapists and their supporters. It can color our perception of their artistic works; anyone who denies that there’s some influence on their artistic works isn’t paying attention. But it doesn’t entitle us to dismiss their artistic works FOR EVERYONE ELSE or UNIVERSALLY. If it did, there go Picasso, and Dali, and Pound… and H.P. Lovecraft…

I may choose never again to read MZB’s work. (Well, professionally I can’t, but you know what I mean.) I cannot and will not censor it. I can take a middle ground and advocate that others shouldn’t, either… but there are perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so regardless. And if “giving money” seems to much, use the bloody library.

(2) There’s also a middle ground on treatment of individuals. For sufficient safety reasons, excluding a convicted pedophile who has shown neither an inclination nor an ability to refrain from that conduct (like Mr Breen) from conventions is a good idea. But extending that to a mandatory lifetime convention ban for every miscreant after an incident of sexual harassment is too far the other direction… if only because that discourages people who’ve made mistakes — or who have mistakes at the core of their very being — from changing for the better. There’s substantial evidence that excessively harsh punishment regimes — especially those focused on vengeance as the primary rationale — lead to worse behavior; if a warped individual is going to get a ban for sexual harassment, and that’s the maximum punishment available, some of those warped individuals aren’t going to limit themselves to harassment.(note 2)

* * *

There’s one further dangerous line being implicated by this conversation; fortunately, I haven’t seen it crossed… yet. Do not, DO NOT make the mistake of condemning someone for their choice of reading matter or art. It’s fine to advocate “People shouldn’t read Author’s work for Reasons-of-Squickiness.” It’s fine to publicly state “I told a local bookstore owner, and she agreed and removed Author’s work from her shelves.” It’s not acceptable to advocate “People who read Author must be condemned because they inherently support Squickiness.” Down that road lie Natalia Gorbanevskaya, and Arthur Koestler, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. And anyone who thinks comparing sexual misconduct to political dissidents is entirely inapposite should take a look at both the actual charges on which those three individuals were brought up… and the legislative history of the Comstock Acts.

(note 1) Besides, if we really want to go overboard with this, all we have to do is look at the misguided decision to implement the Forrest J. Ackerman Big Heart Award… in the face of essentially irrefutable evidence of fraud that was public knowledge at the time that naming was proposed, which has only gotten more despicable and better documented (for some value of “documented,” which was part of the fraud) with time.

(note 2) I have personal experience, during my time as a commanding officer, with having to deal with the aftermath of this kind of thinking… more than once as the commander of the perpetrator, and more than once as the commander of the victim.

RobJun 24, 2014 @ 11:52:51

I think there are matters of degree in these issues. I don’t think there is a black or white answer that works for all cases of separating art from artist. Instead, you can look at various factors, such as:

1. The nature of the problem with the artist;
2. The content of the art itself; and
3. The amount of time the has passed to bring perspective to the artist and work.

With respect to #1, I think there is a rather large difference between something like MZB, which I believe is just indicative of a terrible person – something that extends so far across the various aspects of humanity that define a person that there’s just no way out from under it. On the other hand, you have something like the controversy over Larry Correia, with whom I may disagree politically, but of whom I can say nothing about his overall humanity. He may well be a perfectly good guy, and I know from experience that certain political opinions don’t preclude that.

So in the one case you have something that, in my view, gets to the core of an individual, and in the other case you do not. Orson Scott Card may be somewhere in the middle, but far closer to the Correia side, because of the extent to which he funds political activity with his money. In the case of MZB, I simply don’t want to read her work anymore. In the case of OSC, I don’t want to find his political activity. The controversy around Correia isn’t going to affect my purchases one way or another.

Moving to #2, the nature of the work. My view is that the work should rise or fall on its own merits. That’s not the same question as to whether I’m going to financially support the work by purchasing it, but simply a question of how to view the work. If the work overtly includes those things that are problematic about the authors, that’s going to cause more of a problem for a work than if it does not (and I don’t agree with the idea that it inherently has to include these things. Someone in another forum mentioned that Mists of Avalon has a child rape scene in it. Well…that certainly moves into a new light in view of recent events, and I think it is correct that it should. Should Card’s Ender’s Game be judged based on political views he holds that don’t make their way into the book. I don’t think so. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and buy it (I said, above, I don’t want to support his work), but I have a functioning mind and can view the work of literature on its own, without having to drag extraneous information into it.

Finally, #3…time. This seems self-evident, I suppose. It works in a couple of ways: 1) it puts the author in context of time and place. For example, The Merchant of Venice has racism and anti-semitism that was common to Elizabethan worldview (and I find the argument that Shakespeare didn’t share some of these beliefs strained). But it has been a bit over 400 years, and I can read Shakespeare and enjoy it without concerning myself over whether he had views I share or that I find repugnant. Moving ahead much further in time, I can read Lovecraft even though he had racist views and I find racism to be repugnant. OSC is still alive and funding politics I don’t agree with, and so I’m not going to buy his works. MZB may be dead, but the revelations are fresh, and her victims are still alive. I don’t think enough time can possibly pass in our lifetimes to say it’s OK to forget about what she did and just read her work. On the other hand, if her work is still around in 200 years, I suspect it will be much easier for people of that future time to read her books and distance themselves from what a nasty person she was.

So, for me personally, MZB’s acts go so centrally to the core of what makes a person, that I don’t have a problem at all saying I won’t read her works or in any way support them. Others may come to a different conclusion, and I’m not going to condemn them for doing so – I can only speak for myself.

Artists are not the same things as politicians. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone suggesting that we gut the clean water act because it’s part of Nixon’s legacy. I also think that when politicians abuse their office, it’s a horrible thing that affects everyone, something that belongs to all of us as Americans. It’s a great harm, but it’s a different from the secret destruction of individual lives perpetrated by child molesters.

I don’t think anyone has advocated censoring or unpublishing MZB’s work. There’s a huge difference between saying “I can’t stomach reading anything by this artist ever again because it makes me puke inside my mouth to think about what she did to children,” and saying the government (or any other controlling entity) should step in and ban her books. Of course, there’s the possibility that if enough people stop buying an artist’s work, or if enough negative PR is associated with it, its publisher will let it go out of print. This is how things work, however.

Maybe more people will be able to distance themselves from her personal nastiness someday. It’s hard to say, because there’s no real historic comparison. There are some famous artists from the past we know are horrible people, but they practiced their depredations in an era where fewer details of people’s lives were recorded for posterity. In any case, for many of us, now is not the time. This artist’s victims are still alive, and some of the people who covered for what she did are too.

And I certainly think it’s entirely reasonable to learn from this sad experience and to aggressively ban known predators from cons and fan events and to report them to law enforcement as well. We know now that child molesters aren’t “cured” by relationships with adults, or stigmatization within their social circle, or by exposure and ridicule. They are a menace and need to be put where they can’t harm anyone else.

bblackmoorJun 24, 2014 @ 11:51:25

I am sick to death of people who can’t tell the difference between social awkwardness and the horrors of *real* sexual harassment and abuse. There are very, very few people would would protect or defend sexual harassment and abuse in fandom today. Exposure of MZB’s repulsive activities is a shock for a reason: it is NOT the norm, despite the hand-wringing of people who cry out for “harassment policies” and other such measures.

“I am sick to death of people who can’t tell the difference between social awkwardness and the horrors of *real* sexual harassment and abuse.”

Me too.

And did you just take a conversation about how fandom failed to adequately confront an active pedophile in its midst and transition into an argument that we don’t need harassment policies and other measures to deal with sexual harassment? Wow. That’s … that’s something.

bblackmoorJun 24, 2014 @ 12:11:33

I was specifically replying to your second to last paragraph (the one that begins “When we ignore…”).

But I regret doing so, and I would delete my comment if I could. The notion that any unwanted (or even mildly annoying) social interaction is the same thing as rape and child-molestation has become the zeitgeist, and anyone who points out that there is a broad spectrum of human behaviour between those extremes risks being branded an “apologist”, “enabler”, or worse.

Lenora RoseJun 25, 2014 @ 03:37:55

Yes, there is a broad spectrum of behaviour in between. And the ones that have been reported thus far under sexual harassment policies have been people who have made their behaviour pretty regularly and with far too much knowledge to be mere “Socially awkward”.

So please take the straw man away. You are not, as yet, an apologist or enabler, but you are also not being especially helpful.

Possibly relevant to my attitude: A minister at my church went through an extended break and an investigation due to a sexual harassment accusation. It was found to be unfounded. I do not consider the hassle she (and the entire church community in its own way) had to go through to get that verdict either inappropriate or a waste of time, because I wanted her cleared absolutely or found culpable unquestionably, and had it been left to something other than a strict clear investigative process, there would always be doubts, and rumours, and whispers, and questions. Which would do their own damage.

AKelleyJun 25, 2014 @ 11:22:12

I agree about this, so much.

Whenever a sexual scandal erupts, there are always people who bring up the argument of false accusations — which are, in truth, extraordinarily rare — and ruined reputations and innocent behavior misunderstood and witch hunts as they push back against any investigation or attempt to make a safer environment.

What they do not seem to realize is that a safe environment for *everybody* is much better created without secrecy and hushing up.

Rather than relying on closing ranks to protect the reputation of the community and gossip to inform victims of their danger, which historically has only ever led to more and worse abuse and freedom for predators, a safer, more humane, more liveable community is made by using clear, open public procedures with careful weighing of evidence and professional investigation and judgement.

All secrecy and silencing does is lead to decades of child rape and protection of the predators who squirm their way into safe-seeming social groups, not to mention the regular explosion of scandals like this and decades and decades of whispering campaigns with no real recourse.

The people who always speak up worry about the reputations of people falsely accused.

Surely those reputations are best protected when evidence is openly weighed and examined, rather than relying on secretive back channels and gossip.

Amy BauerJun 24, 2014 @ 12:29:30

Jim, this post was eloquent. I attended a few Darkovers but was never a huge fan of MZB although I did like Mists of Avalon well enough when I first read it. I certainly never heard anything about the pedophilia until this past month. I am appalled that so many people were/are such apologists for her. That saddens me deeply. I truly do not understand it. I hope her children find peace.

MaryJun 24, 2014 @ 12:41:53

As a vendor at conventions, I will speak out on this. I also vend at Ren festivals. I cannot tell you how delighted I was the day certain ren festivals started charging us vendors to run background checks on ourselves and employees of the festival. These conventions and festivals are attended by many, many young people who are entering through the gates in expectation of a safe, family-friendly event. To have these young folks violated in such an environment is horrifying and deludes the reputation of not only that event, but other similar events…thus reducing attendance at such festivals or events. There is no real method of remove all of these type individuals from events…but forcing them to pay full price admission will, perhaps, deter their presence when they are so used to prima dona status.

Frankly, the invited guests should be held to a higher standard…not a lower one…than the paying patrons to the event. After all…if the invited guest is being paid to be there…or is getting tipped for being there…or other benefits for being there (increase book sales comes to mind) then they are putting themselves out there as an example for these young folks to follow…and should be “worthy” of that leadership role. With their fame comes the responsibility to continue to earn the respect of readership…not entitlement to abuse of same.

We, as a society need to find the balance between the silence and the mania that leads to credible outcries and prosecution of actual offenders. Right now, the balance is tipped on the child that cries wolf because they are pissed off and know how to terrorize the person they’re pissed off at. Then, when there are celebrities being accused, there’s the “me-too” crowd. There are victims…and they need a voice…and they need to be heard. The predators need to be removed from guest lists to protect the reputation of the convention, festival, etc…not to mention the liability from law suits if a venue knowingly has a predator as a guest (an “I don’t believe it” is not a defense in such a law suit.)

Anyway…my .02 on it.

Anna RoseJun 24, 2014 @ 12:53:42

She admitted in depositions that she KNEW what was going on with what her husband was doing to those boys, and apparently didn’t do anything to make it stop. It’s not as though she was ignorant of what was going on. She even suggested in those depositions that a 12 or 14 year old boy was old enough to make his own decisions about having sex.

This just makes me sick.

DanaJun 24, 2014 @ 13:46:48

For anyone who thinks they’ve just got to read MZB because they heard her stories were good, even after reading this, there are two options for you. You can check her books out of the library, or you can buy them used. Authors don’t get any money from used book sales unless they’re selling the books themselves. Obviously, since MZB’s dead, she can’t do that, so no fear of her profiting.

Anyone considering selling her books used could also consider taking the profits they earn and donating them to RAINN or some other abuse/molestation survivor group. It’s not like MZB will have any chance anymore to even begin trying to right her wrongs. And would that even be possible? You can’t take back something like that. You can’t even try.

wendyJun 24, 2014 @ 15:10:12

I am thinking along those lines – I own most of her Darkover boooks used, but I think I would feel better if I toted up the cover prices of all of them and then donated that amount to RAINN or another group that helps survivors of abuse/molestation. I’m unemployed right now, so that’s not an option, but I definitely plan to do so when I am solvent again.

KLJun 24, 2014 @ 16:42:25

In some places authors do receive a small amount of (public) money based on how popular their book/s is/are from a public library. So you might want to check whether this is the case where you live if you’re planning on reading the books of someone you don’t particularly want to give money to.

The main beneficiary of the Bradley estate is Elizabeth Waters, who knew about the abuse and covered it up to protect her lover (admitted, in the depositions) MZB. Personally, I would rather never buy a book again than support her, but certainly I will never buy a book that puts money in the pocket of a child-rape enabler. Moira first told her about the abuse when she was three. Years. Old. Waters knew about it for that long. And when a child she knew went to her for help, she spoke to the people the child was asking for help AGAINST about the matter? There is no doubt; nobody is that stupid. This was enabling.

There are millions upon millions of books in the world.
Yes, MZB’s works are tainted by these accusations. No, wait, they are saturated by these accusations.
If you own them you should take them out back and set them on fire.
Read something that didn’t financially contribute to a lifestyle of raping children.

Jim YanniJun 24, 2014 @ 16:20:34

I find myself incredibly torn here. I don’t want to be one of those people who defend a rapist (particularly a child rapist) and who accuses the victim of lying because it’s easier than accepting that they’re telling the truth. And from what I’m seeing here, the evidence that these allegations are true is pretty overwhelming; at least I see nothing here to suggest that they aren’t.

But I also find it all but inconceivable that they are true, not because MZB was a famous person, or even because she was a talented writer. But because of the way her characters treated each other, and the way they interacted. It is just mind-boggling that someone with that good an idea of how people should treat each other, whose characters consistently knew the difference between right and wrong, and whose plots consistently centered around the ideas of decency and consideration, could have done the things that she’s accused of. I’m not saying that it’s not true, or even that I don’t believe it. Just that it’s unfathomable. It requires that I re-evaluate some very basic precepts that inform my capacity to trust my judgment.

That being said, it bothers me that these allegations are coming out 15 years after she died, when she isn’t around to defend herself. Or even to acknowledge her crimes and repent. I will never know how she would have responded to these allegations, and that seems wrong, somehow. On the other hand, the fact that she’s dead simplifies the question of whether to boycott her books; buying them will no longer enrich her, and I see nothing indicating that anybody who currently profits from their sale took part in her alleged crimes (although I suppose there’s a good chance that they were at least complicit by silence, so perhaps it would be safest to only buy her books used, so that no royalties will accrue to her estate.) But I cannot see that it would accomplish anything useful to destroy the dozens of her books that I have, to refuse to re-read them, and certainly not to sell them to others. I see nothing in any book that she wrote that is other than uplifting and inspiring. To trash that would be counterproductive. I don’t understand how it is possible for someone who was guilty of what she’s accused of to have created such beauty, but if in fact it is, the beauty is still beauty regardless of its source. And I’m not talking about beauty in terms of “entertaining”; I’m talking about the moral lessons to be found in her writing. If she was as big a hypocrite as she’d have to have been to write those stories while being guilty of what she’s accused of here, that’s incredibly sad and disappointing. But it doesn’t invalidate the message if the messenger didn’t actually believe in it.

“That being said, it bothers me that these allegations are coming out 15 years after she died, when she isn’t around to defend herself.”

It’s more accurate to say that most of us are hearing about these allegations for the first time 15 years after she died.

Allegations of MZB abusing her own children appear in the court depositions taken while she was alive, in the testimony of her longtime close companion (and, we are told, sole heir to her literary trust) Elisabeth Waters: Waters admitted, under questioning, that Moira, while still a young child, confided to Waters that she was physically and sexually abused by both her parents.

MZB’s own deposition, in her own words, states that she was aware of her husband’s sexual activities with children and did nothing about it.

As you’ve probably seen from some of the other comments, you’re not along in feeling torn up about all of this. And for the most part, I don’t think anyone is saying you have to destroy all of your MZB books or anything like that. Everyone’s struggling and figuring out what’s best for themselves on that one.

And while I completely understand not wanting to believe the allegations, I’d also point out that the art isn’t the artist. I’ve read beautifully-written books about tolerance and acceptance from authors who turned out to be nasty bigots, for example. Likewise, I’ve worked with rapists and batterers who were very, very good at passing for kind-hearted, friendly people. It’s disturbing as hell.

SallyJun 24, 2014 @ 19:30:47

The classic case is Ted Bundy, who volunteered at a suicide prevention hotline at the same time he was a serial killer.

EmiliaCAug 07, 2014 @ 12:20:08

I’m totally upset and I extend all my heart to Moira, Mark and the other victims.
I wholeheartedly praise Moira’s courage and admire her strength. I cannot even start to fathom the pain she’s been through and it is a wonder she is here to testimony her strength and beauty in the face of all who were silent and of all who still would deny.
I believe her and will support the victims anyway I can.

And I’ll start by explaining why I won’t read anymore by MZB.
On this I’m in a very peculiar position, because I actually decided to try and understand if it was really possible to separate author and art here.

First of all let me say that till a few days ago I didn’t know anything about MZB, apart that she was a must-read for any fantasy reader.
Just 4 days ago, I picked up “The Fall of Atlantis” and I started to read it with no knowledge of MZB’s life, works and the monster she was…

Then, after reading say 20% of the book, I became curious about her background. This was triggered by the fact that I vaguely remembered she was seen as a feminist, but since the start of the book, it struck me for its poor depiction of women.
All of them appear to be impossibly beautiful and oh-so-sensitive and apparently manipulable. Everything about them revolves around fertility and pregnancy, every sacred rite that involves them entails nudity.
It’s all about women and reproduction, women and restrictive laws about their sexual behavior, women and sacred sexual rites, women and the blood and the mistery of pregnancy.
I always feel disturbed when women are treated like this. Being a woman is not about pregnancy and to be considered “sacred” because of maternity is a really really poor thing in exchange of being only secondarily considered as a person.
In the book, also, right from the start there is this tension between the mature Riveda that tries to seduce the adolescent Deoris.

To be honest reading the book I was already perceiving a bad vibe.
And that’s why I searched for MZB’s background… and discovered the unimaginable horror behind it.
Then what? Then I went on reading because I was overwhelmed and stunned by this discovery and I wanted to see if my early sensations about the book were going to change or be affected someway. In other words I wanted to understand if it was possibile to read the book in spite of its author, even though I already had sensed something in it that made me uneasy.

So I went on reading… (contains spoilers necessary to explain my perspective).
In time Riveda comes to completely control Deoris’ mind, he couples with her, he uses her in a dark rite to impregnate her.
Another young girl, Demira, is raped by her father in order to get her pregnant of “a superior being”. More than that, Riveda clearly states that the girl was programmed and procreated in virtue of the future plan to rape her, committing incest to get her pregnant.
The description and behavior of the two sisters that should be the focus of the narration (Deoris-Domaris), appear to me as the portraying of suffering puppets at the mercy of external wills. They traverse their own sorrows without understanding each other, divided by the very forces that control their programming. There’s something subtly wrong in these portraits, like there’s self-indulgence in describing how these tender, beautiful, innocent hearts are chained to other’s will. It goes like “she is so young and beautiful, she suffers and yet she is so beautiful… and then she bends to the overpowering will”. This is so insisted that smells… wrong.

I should be clear that I’ve not yet finished the book at this point, but I cannot help but think that Riveda is the author’s channel for her abominable obsessions, no matter how much consolatory the ending will turn to be.
It seems to reveal all the obsession to control the young and the innocent ones, to abuse them, to play on their own weaknesses and lack of experience. To derive joy from having control over them, from owning “things of beauty”, young and malleable, from inflicting them sufferings.
I can feel in this book the cruelty that Moira describes in her mother so much that it is creepy.
For example I totally cringed reading the dialog in which Riveda tells that Demira was procreated and raised only in virtue of the future plan to rape her – his own daughter – and get her pregnant.
I could not help but think… a cruel woman meets an acknowledged pedophile, marries him and has children with him.
But why in all the world should a woman desire to have children with an aknowledged child abuser? It could have been understandable only if she was truly convinced of his innocence or inner change.
Then you discover she knew so well otherwise, and took active part in those abominable crimes and they even abused their own children (along with others), so in retrospective how can you doubt it was planned right from the start?
How can you doubt Riveda is voicing something too disgustingly close to MZB’s real deeds or thoughts?

So here you can see how can be impossible to separate author from art.
I felt there was something that made me uneasy reading this book and that’s what in the first place made me wonder about the author’s background, but after I knew everything turned for the worst.
The things that maybe I would have just dismissed as ugly and unpleasant, became an unbearable horror, like looking through a fancy disguising veil into the revolting fantasies of a skewed mind.
Probably it is a matter of content, and I’ve been unlucky reading “The fall of Atlantis” of all the books that MZB wrote, but here it is for you: reading this book after knowing about her monstrosities was a sorry, sorry experience to me.

MaryJun 24, 2014 @ 16:23:50

Having said my piece a bit ago, I also want to say another side to this. MZB was born in the 1930’s. Marriage laws WERE different back then…and what we refer to as children now…were, in fact, getting married and making sexual decisions at that time. Also, during that time, women did not speak out against their husband…it was socially unacceptable. It was “unbecoming” of a woman to “gossip” about her husband and she would have been outcast. Unmarried pregnancies were reason for firing a woman for immoral conduct…and many more stigmas were attached to women. This does not excuse her behavior, or lack of openness, but does explain it. The deposition was taken in 1998…34 years after the alleged incident. The questions being asked were being asked to a 68 year old woman who had already had multiple strokes and suffered significant memory lapses. So in some ways, MZB was trapped by being born into an era where these things simply weren’t talked about.

In the criticisms that will follow…I will remind this audience that rape victims were blamed for the attack up until about 15 or so years ago (and to some extent continues today)…it was never the perpetrator that was blamed…unless unyielding proof prevailed against him/her. If the charges were against the parent??? God forbid…it was only about the child having a temper tantrum over not being able to go out…or for being grounded… And the parents were believed up until about just 30 years ago (now the onus is the other way around and children now use this as leverage to terrorize another adult into doing what they want.)

The pendulum needs to swing into the middle…where calmer heads prevail. Should he have been “banned” from the conventions? As a paid guest…yes. As an attendee…if he’s paying his way…there is no real way to stop that.

Not everything MZB did in her lifetime is horrid. While folks are wanting to burn her books…let’s also shut down the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms), or toss the Avalon books completed by Diana L. Paxson just because they were friends? Where does to book burning and witch-hunt (excuse the pun) end on this?

I have been a victim of rape. I was raised in the time where victims were to blame for their abuse. I DO understand the pain and hurt and horror of knowing no escape from a nightmare… But I learned that I live in a time much different from that of my parents. I’m glad of that. I’m glad that victims can now be heard. But I’m also glad that I can let the past be buried with my perpetrators and their wrongs no longer rule my life…because as long as I let their actions control my pain…I truly had not moved on… But now I’m free.

I understand what you’re saying about times and attitudes being different, but I don’t think it’s an explanation. For example, I have a close friend, still alive, who was born a year or two before MZB was, so these women were contemporaries. I have known this person very well for about 25 years, and can readily say she would be shocked and revolted by everything in these documents–and would have been shocked and revolted back then, too. I also know from many anecdotes about her past that she’d have left a man like Breen, would not have married a man like Breen (Breendogle was before MZB married him, after all), and would have urged a friend or relative to leave a man like Breen. And would have considered anyone who tied a child to a chair and threatened to remove their teeth with a pliers (as is stated in the depositions that MZB admitted to doing to her young daughter) an abuser; again, I am not guessing, my friend has talked about physical abuse in her own childhood and her emphatic opposition to physically abusing children (which stated clearly to her prospective husband before marrying him and having children in the 1950s). Even though my friend was (and is), generally speaking, a fairly conventional woman rather than a ground-breaking social radical, there is realistically no question that she’d have dealt with any of these people or problems as MZB did.

I can think of a number of other people (including relatives) I know or have known (when they were alive) very well who were also MZB’s contemporaries or who were from a previous generation than MZB who also would have reacted very differently to these people and events than the people in Breendoggle and in MZB’s and Waters’ depositions acted.

People did indeed =talk= much less about these things in the past. The media also talked much, much less about these things in the past. But apart from the very young, we’ve all known people of MZB’s generation or older, and among the elders I have known well throughout my life, I have not found a chasm of values in terms of child abuse, sexual abuse, child molesters, and spouses who engage in abhorrent practices.

It’s not a COMPLETE explanation, no. It’s almost certainly part of an explanation for the failure-to-report part of the rather disgusting little tale.

I have a one-word suggestion for everyone who thinks there’s a clear, objective “truth” available in circumstances like this — one that blames exactly the right people in exactly the right proportions:

Rashomon.

And that’s the EASY instance, because there WAS someone who “knew the truth”: The director.

Veronica SchanoesJun 24, 2014 @ 22:15:52

Rashomon is a work of art. It is deliberately made to be that way. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not there is a clear, objective truth in circumstances like this.

I disagree. Rashomon was not made up out of whole cloth… and is disturbing in how close it comes to what the outsider charged with making a decision is confronted with.* Sometimes things are easy, as in the old Far Side cartoon (“Of course I did in in cold blood, you idiot! I’m a reptile!”). More often, it’s not, especially when the stories being presented are memories with no other evidence available.

And in this instance, I’d argue things are actually even more distorted, because none of us are charged with actually making a decision regarding MZB and/or decades-later reactions. We may choose to do so, but there’s no duty laid upon us.

None of which is to try to excuse anything.

* I spent the better part of a decade as a commanding officer. I’ve been that outside decisionmaker. It’s no fun.

Veronica SchanoesJun 25, 2014 @ 07:58:15

It really doesn’t matter whether or not Rashomon was made up out of whole cloth. It’s a work of art. Works of art are not evidence for how things work in real life, no matter how persuasive they are (and it is their job to be persuasive). What they are is evidence of how a particular culture thinks they work.

Rape as a crime is only unclear if the cultural assumption is that women/children lie about rape and men/adults must be protected.

You speak of Rashoman, but be it pure fiction or based on fact, that classic was about 4 different and completely contradictory versions–each dependent on a different viewpoint–of what happened. In this case, all the principals are in (the child, the mother, and, if not the father, then the court that convicted him) are in substantial agreement about what happened. Discussion (obviously lengthy discussion) now can only focus on what could or should, then or now, be done about it. And yes, personal friends and devoted fans, are arguing that maybe it didn’t really happen–but they are all peripheral, and basically their opinion of what happened isn’t relevant, since, again, the principals all confirm it.

Well, ignoring that MZB is often touted as a feminist who was part of a crowd of people who are ahead of their time with regards to attitudes about sex, gender roles, and relationships, there are a couple of things to remember:

1. Breen’s behavior with children were known in the Berkeley SFF community before MZB married him in 1964. He was convicted of child molestation for the first time in 1954, and the “Breendoggle” events happened in 1962.

2. Many of Breen’s victims were prepubescent. Sex with ten year old and younger kids (and especially outside of marriage) was not acceptable when Breen and Bradley were growing up either.

3. Bradley abused her own daughter, starting when she was three. I have a hard time seeing how “old fashioned” notions about sex, family and the appropriate age for a child to engage in consensual sexual activity could have been a factor here.

4. My own parents are about the same age as these folks, and in fact they lived in Berkeley in the late 50s and very early 60s (thankfully, they did not move in the same circles). Yes, attitudes were different, but this kind of behavior would have appalled them if any of their university friends engaged in such.

SallyJun 24, 2014 @ 19:01:14

It’s been substantially longer than MZB’s lifetime that 10 year olds were getting married in the US. Much less 3 year olds.

SingingdragonJun 24, 2014 @ 16:29:22

I feel terrible, for many reasons, I thought I wanted to be like her, write like her… and now I am glad that I am not like her, either in writing or lifestyle. I feel for her children and the many other victims that are surviving this horrible history. As a survivor of the same kind of abuse, I can say that the survivors often get blamed, excluded from estates and socially ostracized when those survivors are from families with “famous” abusers. Tho my family had no “famous” abusers we had abusers nonetheless and they got away with it so that the family could have “peace” and live without any kind of controversy or dirt attached to the family name. Little do most of them know that there was always dirt on our name because of them allowing this to go on. I was not the only one this family member abused, but because of fear those outside the family did not report it, thus it was always his word over mine. Many have come forward years later to apologize for not reporting it, but I cannot blame a victim for their fear..only the abuser for his abuse. They say to forgive and to forget…but that’s not the reality of it. For the sake of peace, they allowed me to be hurt continuously until I could get away, he then found others to abuse, and he still got away with it. Those that excuse the sexual predation in favor of the art produced by those pedophiles are just as guilty and deserve the same ostracization as those that commit the abuse. turning your face away from evil only allows that evil to continue…Go ahead and turn your face away, refuse to see what’s being done, or been done. What you do in life will always get you the same return in hell. Enjoy your sheltered, rainbow farting unicorn filled life, when you die and go to your little bit of heaven according to your doctrine you will still have to explain why you let someone’s soul be eaten at by evil.

Mariah Canfield-JonesJun 24, 2014 @ 16:39:19

I have read through a majority of all this and my heart is hurt, I wanted to be a writer, I wanted more than anything to admire someone who wrote great works, Marion was on that list. There is the Japanese writer, Kenji Miyazawa who wrote Night on the Galactic Railroad, Roger Zelazny, J.R.R. Tolkien, and suddenly, I had to put a large red streak right through Marion’s name because when I read the evidence and I’m sorry to say, my heart is broken. Fans of her works must feel the burn as much as I do, the overwhelming anger, as much as this is old news, it burns still to the fans of these works.

I have urged my friends to read this article and also post their views, it basically hurts my soul and heart that i have to actually re-evaluate my own love for writing. I am an aspiring writer and was influenced by both Japanese and Western cultures. I am now staring at this, my eyes burning with anger

MaryJun 24, 2014 @ 17:48:32

I’m not sure what citation was being looked for on the one comment.

To Laura – I will only say that my birth mother moved out of the bedroom from her husband when she learned of him molesting my half-sister. I was molested by my adoptive father…and repeatedly reported it. My adoptive parents silenced me when the children’s minister at my church raped me. All because of the stigma associated with the act. Has my adoptive mother’s attitudes changed now that she’s in her late 80’s? Yes. But back in the 50’s and 60’s women accepted what men told them as truth. Truth is…my dad did, finally, admit to my mom what he did while I was growing up…her reaction in her late 70’s “Oh…that’s in the past. Do we have to bring that up now?” She didn’t want to face that she’d let him do that to me…or that I had told the truth. But he’s dead, and he and I made our peace before he died. Because I found my birth mom, and was able to see the lives impacted there, and the entire family’s reaction to it all (don’t talk, don’t tell)…(I actually found out from my step-dad himself since he wanted to tell me why my birth mom was mad at him.)

I would like to have thought that my birth mom would have tossed him out…or done worse…which is what I really wanted my adoptive mom to do. But the truth is…she did more than my adoptive mom did. At least she moved out of his bedroom and hadn’t slept with him sense.

All the times I talked and reported it while growing up in the 60’s-70’s someone would come to the house, talk with my parents, get the “oh she’s just mad about blah blah blah” I’d get talked to by the caseworker about how wrong it was to make up lies…and once she left my life became hell.

Most likely…that’s what happened with Moria too. The authorities listened to the parents…not the kid (whereas in today’s society…the kids is listened to solely…and sometimes falsely.) As I said…the pendulum needs to swing to the middle. Not every kid is telling the truth…but neither is every parent.

Your experiences remind me of a housemate of mine who worked at a shelter for battered women who’d left their husbands, back in the 1980s. She let me read the material they gave herwhen she started the job, to familiarize herself with the problems these women had dealt with. These were all first-hand accounts by people at the shelter (names removed, for their own protection) in which these battered women talked about their experiences and their attempts to escape their abusers.

And the thing that was so shocking to me then, only 30 years ago, was how every single layer of the community and the system failed each of these women again and again and again and again. Family members who saw their injuries and bruises urged them to return to their husbands, be more patient, not make a fuss, etc. Ministers and priests insisted they be more obedient and docile, and blamed them for being battered. Hospitals patched them up and sent them home to their abusers, advising them not to dwell on what had happened. Social workers advised them just to consider themselves lucky that they had husbands and homes. Cops said, “Try not to make him so angry again.” Friends abandoned them, condemned them, shunned them.

Only 30 years ago. It was eye opening for me as a young woman who was unfamiliar with domestic violence to read personal account after account after account after account like this, written by real people at the shelter when my roommate was working.

One of the huge turn-arounds in the system, as I learned during a police course I took last autumn, is that in most places in the US now, when the cops get a domestic violence call, it’s an automatic arrest. They cannot leave the scene without arresting someone. If the woman is bleeding and weeping but claims nothing has happened, the man gets arrested anyhow. (Whereas it used to be that if the woman wouldn’t speak up or press charges, cops couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything.) If the situation isn’t nearly that clear, then both (or all) parties in the house get arrested. A domestic vioence call is now a mandatory arrest (to ensure that no one gets beaten or killed as soon as the police are safely out of sight again).

SallyJun 24, 2014 @ 19:26:40

Laura, you can see that even on “Cops”. (A guilty sick-day pleasure of mine) They’re always rolling up on domestic cases, separating the parties, and making it clear that someone’s going to be arrested. If they can’t sort it out, both of them go. Usually the one who isn’t yelling and bleeding gets the handcuffs and free ride to the station, particularly if there’s a neighbor who called it in and has heard/seen the trouble before.

Veronica SchanoesJun 24, 2014 @ 22:21:00

But back in the 50′s and 60′s women accepted what men told them as truth.

That’s simply not true as a sweeping generalization. Many did. Many didn’t. I know enough feminists of an older generation to know that.

After my grandmother’s mother died, when she was 12, she was sent to a foster family where the father molested her. Once. She told the female social worker and was whisked out of there so quickly it made her head spin. This would have been in the 1930s. Living in an earlier decade does not prevent a woman from developing moral agency.

As for children being believed too much–not according to what I hear, when children are returned to abusive homes time and time again.

celliJun 25, 2014 @ 11:39:13

Mary, I don’t know what citation Laura was looking for, but I’m not comfortable with your categorization of children who report sexual abuse:

“now the onus is the other way around and children now use this as leverage to terrorize another adult into doing what they want”

The authorities listened to the parents…not the kid (whereas in today’s society…the kids is listened to solely…and sometimes falsely.)

Not true. My family regularly practices psychological torture techniques used in brainwashing. The psychological abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect was so pervasive that I was CONVINCED I was just odd and had communication issues with my parents and brother.

Due to everything, my memory is not entirely intact. There are gaps. There are a lot of gaps. But I remember asking others, “Is this behavior normal?” when I was 12. I remember being considered a liar well before that.

Most responded, “Everyone does that sometimes.” A few asked if what I described happened often, and when I said it did, I was told I’d appreciate my parents when I got older.

I was choked once. Even at the time, what bothered me wasn’t that I was choked—it was that my brother denied doing it immediately afterwards. (He still insists I made it up.)

It took 26 years and nearly experiencing a nervous breakdown to realize that my “oddities” and other details that my family harasses me about as things “wrong” with me? Are actually signature symptoms of PTSD, caused by those things. This is despite me being very rational, reasonable, logical, and intellectual. I also have a fairly high IQ.

My family isn’t stupid, either. The vast majority of everything is done without witnesses or evidence, and I’ve always gotten in trouble for compiling evidence or talking to someone else. They’re very good at red herring and straw men arguments that conflate issues or misquote things ever-so-slightly. If I do make a solid counterargument, I’m ignored, accused of never being willing to admit when you’re wrong, and/or accused of making things up.

I’m 27. It’s only been in the past year that I’ve started paying attention and realizing just how bad things are—and despite my even having witnesses willing to testify on my behalf, multiple people (including the pastor) insist that I need to “reconcile” with my parents and have repeatedly refused to so much as meet with my witnesses.

So to those of you saying children are necessarily believed instead of parents, think again.

Amy CJun 27, 2014 @ 20:20:54

Mary wrote:
The pendulum needs to swing into the middle…where calmer heads prevail. Should he have been “banned” from the conventions? As a paid guest…yes. As an attendee…if he’s paying his way…there is no real way to stop that.

I cannot possibly disagree with you more. Yes, he should be been banned. Even as a paying guest. You don’t take his money, you don’t let him in. Because a convention has an obligation not to allow a know sexual predator access to other con-goers. This is NOT difficult.

I am saddened and sickened and horrified to learn that the author who created the Renunciates, who created Romily McAran, could have done such terrible things. I am sadder by far for the children who were not believed and the pain they suffered.

SallyJun 24, 2014 @ 19:19:28

Once a friend of mine told me a story about someone in her extended family who abused a child. It took her years to find out the whole story, with the usual family closing ranks to protect their good name.

BUT.

(Trigger warnings for extreme violence)

It was rural Texas. The other men in the family tied up the molester, beat the hell out of him, then threw him in a pen with an untamed bull, then let pigs into the pen.

Then they erased his name from the family Bibles, chiseled it off his mother’s tombstone, and in ways legal and bribery, got his name out of the mostly-paper databases that existed at the time. DMV record? Gone. Social Security? Gone. Military? Gone. Marriage license? Gone. His daughter’s birth certificate? Changed to say “father unknown”.

(The name of the victim was never mentioned, to protect the innocent. My friend didn’t even know the gender.)

Is that a horrible reaction? Yes. Is it a very human reaction that one might grudgingly admire? Yes.

Part of me thinks “horrific overreaction” and part of me thinks “well, damn, that’s how to do it right”.

Being civilized 100% of the time is hard. While I abhor torture and premeditated murder, I cannot condemn that family for what they did.

EmilyJun 25, 2014 @ 15:24:53

Apart from the obvious (murder is wrong, what if you get the wrong person) there’s also practical reasons why this sort of reaction is bad for victims.

Many people have extremely conflicted feelings about their abusers, particularly when they’re children. Being afraid that terrible things will happen to their ‘friend’ if they tell anyone motivates them to keep quiet.

This sort of extreme reaction also makes it hard for friends and acquaintances of the abuser. Not only may they want to protect their friend from death, but believing that molesters are 100% evil beasts to be killed makes it hard for them to accept that a friend who they know positive things about can also be capable of great evil. The cognitive dissonance kicks in and they deny evidence even to its face.

We can see that sort of thing going on here. People know good things about MZB, good works that she’s done, beautiful things that she’s written – they cannot reconcile that with ‘monster who should have been destroyed long ago’.

I think one piece of this is the difference between emotions and actions.

It’s very normal to feel angry and helpless when hearing about this sort of revelation, and to fantasize about doing *something*. When I’ve spoken to friends and loved ones who were raped, I imagined all sorts of things I wanted to do to punish their abusers. For me, that was one way to process through all of that rage and powerlessness.

That doesn’t mean I acted on those fantasies, and I’m not saying that anyone should. But I also understand where those fantasies come from, if that makes sense.

EmilyJun 24, 2014 @ 21:44:43

As a reader, this has been a disturbing couple of hours, although obviously my own distress and confusion are only a tiny fraction of what people actually close to those involved in these incidents must have felt.

While some details (particularly the Satanic Ritual Abuse accusations) are questionable, there seems to be no way to doubt that great harm was done to a number of young people and that a beloved author was knowingly complicit in allowing it to take place and shielding the perpetrator.

SorchaReiJun 24, 2014 @ 22:16:48

My parents were born on farms in the early 1930s and lived in Berkeley in the 1960s. When in the 1970s the first media reporting of court cases accusing a husband of raping his wife began to make the papers, my mother told me she didn’t know how she felt about it. Of course, it was wrong for a man to hurt his wife, but she also just ‘had a feeling’ that “marital rape” was an oxymoron.

(This freaked me out so much I refused to discuss it with her for 10 years. When I nervously brought it up again, she admitted her views had changed. She also said that her traditional idea of marriage is that a husband accepts no as an answer but a wife does her best only to say no very infrequently. However, she had come to see that a man who doesn’t listen to “no”, even or especially from his wife, was a rapist.)

Anyway, I tell you this to demonstrate what her traditional ideas about marriage and sex looked like in the late 60s and early 70s, as background for: when in 1969 my brother said that one of his friends had told him that his dad played sex games with my brother’s friend, she went into action. She spent some time with both boys and got a coherent enough story out of the kid that she believed what happened, and she leapt into action. She called the police on him, got my brother the therapeutic support he needed to cooperate with the police, and generally made sure everyone who needed to know what happened found out. (The guy was a school principal, so this was very important.) She also let the guy’s wife and two kids stay with us for a few weeks after the wife left her husband.

It’s obviously possible to have been raised on a very small farm during the 1930s, have soaked up very traditional ideas about sex and marriage, and still have recognized sex crimes against minors when you saw it.

EmilyJun 24, 2014 @ 22:28:22

Also, from the deposition statements, it seems pretty clear that she did recognise what was going on. It wasn’t a case of him telling her that nothing happened and her believing it because he was The Man or anything like that. He told her that things did happen… and she chose not to act.

CJTJun 24, 2014 @ 22:48:55

I think the decision on when, why and how to separate an artist from their art is entirely a personal decision. I hadn’t read Card before I found out about his bigotry. Now I can’t bring myself to do it. Or watch the movie, for that matter. My brother, who is equally appalled by Card’s bigotry, read the books before he found out about the bigotry. He likes the books too much to get read of them, and will reread them, but knowing what he knows now, won’t buy any new books or new copies – if he wanted to read one he didn’t own, he’d go with used or the library. (We had this conversation in depth at one point.) With MZB, I haven’t reread her books in years. The last time I read any of them was about twenty years ago, when I realized that the books I’d adored in my teens did not do much for me in my mid-twenties. I doubt I’ll destroy or otherwise get rid of the ones I still have, but I’m not going to reread them, either. They’ll probably get pitched in a move, or something.

When I first heard this story, a week or so ago now, I was (and still am, really) sickened, pretty literally at first. It feels almost like a personal betrayal. I had such respect for her before. It’s horrifying to find this out.

But I knew Lovecraft was racist before I read Lovecraft. There’s the old “man of his times” excuse, but I mentally file him more with the “liking problematic stuff” than separating art from artist. The racism is pretty blatant in some of the stories, not just in Lovecraft’s background. It’s like still liking a series despite the fact that it never passes Bechdel and the creators have said some pretty sexist things. I can acknowledge the flaws and still appreciate the strengths. I haven’t seen a Mel Gibson movie in quite a while, but I have seen movies with other actors who have said or done awful things.

Drawing the line between “I can’t separate this work from the horrible things the creator of it has done” and “this work is problematic but I still enjoy its strengths” is a personal call, and I think it’s something we can only make individually, on a case by case basis.

RamonaJun 24, 2014 @ 22:52:50

Outraged and angry. I have read Moira’s posts on another blog. I admire her strength for speaking Truth. I am disturbed at the complicity of the quietude and the cover ups. I know that MZB had friends, ghostwriters. Is there a reliable/verifiable source of names of persons that *knew* what was happening? I can’t change the nature of a sexual predator. I do not have the words and wisdom to help heal the assaulted. But I don’t have to purchase or own writings by those whose silence damned the children to further victimization.

MariahCJJun 24, 2014 @ 23:51:39

I am appalled and outraged that I used to admire this writer, now I can’t bring myself to even look at her works anymore. This is entirely distressing for me because I was wanting to be a writer since I was a child. Now I don’t know what kind of person I would be and also questions my morals on how I view this.

Truthfully, after reading through the documentation from the trial itself, Marion didn’t even bother to inform a convention’s security of the problems, which as someone who attends a convention regularly a year, that is inexcusable, that is not only negligent, it is just down right inhuman to me.

MattJun 25, 2014 @ 00:30:45

I think it’s worth noting, since a lot of people seem to miss it, that she didn’t just cover up the child rape. She actively participated, and tried to drown her own child for not letting her get away with it.

I’m having trouble taking this in. I didn’t read much of Bradley’s work, but quite a few authors I followed considered her a close personal friend. She had a pretty big impact on a culture that I love being part of. She provided some degree of support for a whole lot of people who have gone on to become great advocates against this kind of thing.

I ran into an interesting fact a couple months back. Deconstructionism, the literary analysis movement that attempts to separate the art from the artist, was largely created by a man who’d written Nazi propaganda. It seems the idea exists to try to separate terrible people from their actions, and vice versa. Nothing exists in a vacuum, which is really unfortunate sometimes.

Also, fuck Heinlein and his pro-incest, pro-pedophilia writings.

EmilyJun 25, 2014 @ 01:26:36

It’s extremely clear that she covered up the child rape, lied to others to protect her husband, and was beyond negligent with the safety of her children. The available evidence from multiple sources is pretty blatant, and this is something that absolutely should be mentioned in any public discussion of her character.

It’s a lot less clear whether she tortured her daughter, participated in satanic ritual murder, molested multiple children, etc. Many people are going to be uncomfortable stating these as facts under the circumstances. (I believe Moira remembers these things, I do not believe she is making them up.)

Veronica SchanoesJun 25, 2014 @ 07:53:15

Her daughter reported that she was molested by her when she was a child. The adult she chose to confide in took no action beyond asking MZB if it was true. MZB responded by saying “Children that age don’t have erogenous zones.” That seems pretty clear to me.

“Deconstructionism, the literary analysis movement that attempts to separate the art from the artist, was largely created by a man who’d written Nazi propaganda.”

That would be Paul de Man. Also, reader-response criticism (or reception theory), which posits that the reader, not the author, is primarily responsible for what they see in a literary text, was created by German scholar Hans Robert Jauß, who had been an officer of the Waffen-SS.

Both are indispensable methods in literary criticism, but they can also be seen as a kind of blame shift: Authors can’t possibly be responsible for what they write or do when you either posit that the author is ‘dead’ (deconstructionism) or that the interpretation of the text rests solely on the reader’s understanding (reception theory). I think it could give some insight to relate this to MZB’s case, whose books provoked an exceptionally strong response from their readers.

I didn’t know that about Jauss, but it doesn’t really change my reading of him. I can’t help but notice that the person who actually came up with the concept of deconstruction has disappeared from this narrative, Jacques Derrida, who was neither a Waffen SS officer, nor a complete opportunist charlatan. I’m also not sure about the interpretation of both deconstruction and reception theory. The author is dead isn’t a notion of deconstruction, but is developed by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, both of who have a strong commitment to a strong form of social justice. Reception theory rather than looking at individual readers looks at the context that texts are produced to understand their formation. I’m not sure why that’s such a controversial idea.

HarleyJun 25, 2014 @ 04:20:49

Something that struck me as a little off about that article was how the emphasis seems to be on her support of her husband, with the fact that she was also a child abuser that her own daughter says was worse being given lesser importance- which plays down the horror of abuse from women in a way that I found quite uncomfortable, as that’s a big factor in how women manage to get away with abuse.

EmilyJun 25, 2014 @ 15:32:27

The one (her husband’s abuse and her knowledge of it) is pretty much proven, documented in multiple sources, and was apparently an open secret for decades. It’s a completely classic case of a ‘childish’ adult ‘befriending’ every child he could lay his hands on. Sometimes in public. Often caught. Everyone knew.

The other is only just now coming out at all. No one knew.

Pat Munson-SiterJun 25, 2014 @ 10:02:31

Got to agree with the above couple of posters re excusing MZB due to her being born when she was, cultural norms, etc. Not only did she condone Breen’s actions as well as covering them up, she abused her own kids. It wasn’t a cultural norm to abuse and torture your own kids. Shades of “Mommy Dearest” to the max, folks.

I was about 9 years old when Breengate happened. I didn’t get involved in fandom until the late 1970s, but had read MZB’s books before that; my Dad was a SF fan (of the type that reads the books, not goes to conventions, etc.) and her books were some of the ones he passed down to me to read. Not one word heard about what we’re talking about today I actually was involved in MZB fandom for a while. . At the time, what I heard about MZB and Breen was that she was a lesbian, he was gay, and that they had married to obtain a veneer of respectability. Not one word in fandom – at least to those of us on the outskirts – about the child rape and abuse. So I don’t find it all that unbelievable that so many of us haven’t heard of this before. Most of this all happened before the internet made it so hard to keep things like this secret. And there has been enough other problems with sexism, harassment etc in fandom over the past few years that the lines of communication on this subject in fandom have been firmly established. I suspect there are going to be more long buried secrets from fandom that are going to surface and get splashed all over the internet in the next few years. (No, no personal knowledge of any; just making a prediction based on what has already happened over the last few years.)

Deciding whether or not to read any MZB again – well, no horse in this race for me; when I tried to write Darkover fanfic in the 1970’s I realized that I couldn’t stand trying to write characters in that universe. I started noticing the overall darkness of the world view, the idea that the civilization was falling into ruin (including the Terran confederation) and that no matter how hard the protagonists tried to make things better, that that civilization was slowly falling apart, doomed to die in destruction, chaos, and death. When I read Mists of Avalon, the same overall theme loomed in the background. Further, the worlds she wrote were of cultures where life sucked for men as well a women, that almost every character, if they were happy, were doomed to have that happiness taken away from them. “Life’s a bitch and then you die” for everyone. So I am not reading or rereading any of her work, but I’d already made that decision a few decades ago. (Gotta admit, I tried reading OSC’s “Ender’s Game” years ago and bounced, so – yeah, I don’t read his stuff, but I made that decision before I found out about his anti-gay attitudes and actions.)

If someone hears about this and still wants to read MZB, I’m not going to call them names. That’s their decision. But if they try and defend her actions in real life, that’s another thing all together. And I think that the folks who knew what was going on years ago and did nothing are going to find out that Kharma can be a real b****.

R. M.Jun 25, 2014 @ 10:50:59

I hadn’t heard about this – I have only a few blogs I visit regularly, this among them. Thanks for posting, Mr. Hines, and for linkage. As painful and triggering, on many levels, as it is – well, I now have more room for books that were NOT written by abusive, enabling, repugnant…persons.

patJun 25, 2014 @ 14:01:53

I began reading MZB’s work as a young teen, in the very early 70s. Star of Danger, which is a very Heinleinish juvie sort of work was one of the first. Over the years, as I went to college and became a young adult, I purchased all her books as soon as they were issued. I recommended them and gave them to others. Many of her themes – that of the social structure and choices for women, on Darkover and compared to then current times, were very pertinent. I admired her characterizations and her world building, though I thought her plotting and narrative could be clumsy and flawed at times. As I became involved in fandom in that period, I met those who only spoke highly of her and thought her admirable. So these latest revelations about her are not just the mere shock of another popular figure falling off a pedestal, but someone who’s been part of my reading life since I was just a child.

But while I agree, and in the past thought, that some of her themes were laudable, some parts of her work has always really disturbed me. One of the earlier posters in this thread commented how he or she felt that in with her themes of choices were women, and acceptance of varying gender relationships, which were issues people were promoting at the time, were issues regarding tolerance toward child sexual abusers. Until today, I never heard anyone agree with me on that.

Much as I loved Heritage of Hastur, I couldn’t understand or accept Dani accepting Dyan as a foster parent after Dyan’s rape and torture of him. I thought it was horrible. I couldn’t understand it. The same for Catchtrap — I loved the circus lives and flying details — but Mario’s rape and abuse of Tommy was impossible for me to accept. In both cases, at the resolution of the works, Marion has the abused children loving or at least condoning their abusers. And who also can forget Inheritor, where the female protagonist accepts her lover torturing and killing a cat for spiritual power (remember Moira now claims Marion killed a mother cat), and sacrificing an autistic child and later her own sister, for the lover to regain his own artistic status. I’m also chilled remembering how Moira claims that Marion “acted out” her characters at the time she was writing them. When I first read Inheritor, I was a new homeowner the female protagonist’s, and loved the initial themes of a young women buying a new home and having spooky things happen. The horrors that followed in the book and Leslye’s (the protagonist’s) condoning of her lover’s evil (because she loved him) was beyond my comprehension. Now I think how relevant to Marion herself.

The themes are intermingled in I think all of her works. According to some accounts, Marion was opposed to Nambla. In other accounts, that she might have to some extent supported Walter’s beliefs – she edited his book by some accounts.

If reading about social themes makes us think, and perhaps leads us to acceptance, then when we regard MZB’s work, how can we credit her support of women’s independence in some ways, and yet not disregard that in some of the same works, she’s condoning, even excusing her protagonists who are child rapists? Perhaps it was unconscious on her part. Perhaps deliberate. As a child and young adult, that dual acceptance of two wildly differing social mores has always bothered me – a puzzle I couldn’t understand – perhaps which made her work stick in my mind.

As a child, I read pretty much whatever I wanted, and thought myself very mature. I would have been the last person to consider banning or censuring any works. It’s a complicated subject. Literature often helps us define social issues. Who is to say those issues can only be written about by good people? And it is pretty clear Marion was far from that. And science fiction, fantasy, has long been a place where societal roles can be deconstructed for analysis. But in MZB’s work, the positive themes of acceptance of individuals outside of societal roles – for women apart from their traditional roles of wives and mothers, for issues of gender — also sit side by side with some pretty horrific character justifications for child rape, abuse and torture. And hearing from victims of where those characters and themes stem from in MZB’s personal life, it tends for me to overcolor all her works. Even if those themes were only a small percentage of characters/themes in a book, or in her works as a whole.

Before these revelations, their existence puzzled and disturbed me. When I first read them, as a child or young adult, I thought my interpretation of what the author was saying was either misconstrued on my part or clumsy incomplete writing on hers – and MZB could be clumsy and incomplete. Now it’s pretty clear there was nothing clumsy or incomplete in her dual messages. They were both there to be read. I never understood how she could condone her abusers, or believed that she really was doing that. But in the light of these revelations, it seems she was now. And while I still have trouble with the idea of banning or censuring books, when I look back at Marion’s work, maybe there’s some merit there.

The_LJun 25, 2014 @ 14:26:11

The scary thing to me is, MZB’s been dead for a good 15 years or so. And this is just now coming out.

I discovered MZB after her death (2008, I think). I read every book the library had with her name on it. I was constantly chomping at the bit for more and was always SO sad she wasn’t around anymore to write more.

And the whole time, I was singing the praises of a child molester. I had literally no clue. If she’d still been alive and I’d known her personally, I might still not have known. That’s terrifying. It’s like, who else am I a fan of who’s done unspeakably bad things to other people?

Like some others, I didn’t know about this matter, and I’m grateful to those who brought it to my attention via their Internet posts. I loved…love…The Mists of Avalon. It was formative reading in my youth. I can’t un-read it, and I can’t un-love it, no matter how much I want to right now. My relationship with the book is complicated now, and sad.

But I would rather have a complicated and sad relationship with a book than condone the abuse of children, especially if I am the woman MZB’s characters helped me to become.

And I would hope that I am that woman. I wish she had been that woman for the children in her life.

You love what you love. It may be more difficult to reread because of what’s happened Some books I’ve loved I’ve chosen not to reread after things come out. (OSC’s Speaker for the Dead)

It’s for people who loved her work that I wrote this on one of my entries:

Many of us have been through some really dark times, and we have the pieces that spoke to our hearts that got us through those times. It genuinely gives me no joy to know that, for those whom MZB’s works were those pieces, I’ve dislodged that for them.

Thank you for that. I saw it in my referer logs, so I’d already read it. I’ve just been traveling the last couple of days, so haven’t followed up on everything yet.

MaryJun 25, 2014 @ 18:47:24

Celi – I appreciate what you are saying, but I have witnessed children tell their daycare teachers “If we can’t watch Bambi, I’m telling my mommy you touched me in my privates” and seen the shocked look on the teacher’s face, cameras in the room show this never happened…but cameras had to be installed so these kids couldn’t make unjustified accusations. Why? BECAUSE KIDS ARE DOING IT!

I’ve heard kids with diagnosis such as Reactive Attachment Disorder, or Mood Disorders, or Bi-polar, make threats along these same lines. It’s terrifying the amount of power placed into these children’s unstable hands. The power is in their hands and some teachers and parents are terrified that their “little darling” is going to have them labeled as a pedophile if the parent or teacher doesn’t cave in to the blackmail.

I’m not going to sit here and debate what has been witnessed by many teachers around the country…nor many therapists as they dig through trying to figure out truth…and many families that have been torn apart by false allegations just to keep some sense of family together.

Is there real child abuse ABSOLUTELY. But when society allows a pissed off child to manipulate a parent or teacher with such allegations, with no sense of balance to offset… then it’s not about justice…it’s about a witchhunt. I’m seeing threads on here where people are claiming Moria talks about “Satanic abuse”…Really? Please document that for me? From everything I’m seeing, Moria has not come out publically about any of it…and it’s all third party saying that she said something…but I’ve not seen documentation claiming anything about Satanic anything….and certainly nothing from Moria herself.

Is child abuse underreported. Yes. That doesn’t change that there are children using outcries to gain attention, money, revenge and more. This does not change that society needs to find the balance that protects the child, and the innocent adults that get caught up in the childish whims of an immature individual who most likely really doesn’t understand the long term impact of their false outcries.

What I see here is partly a community trying to heal from horrid news…and another part of the community trying to stir up more drama and schism to bring on more hysteria.

What should the community have done?
Follow the constitution: Innocent until proven guilty.
What did the community do?
Followed the constitution: Innocent until PROVEN guilty.
What should MZB have done? It’s irrelevant. Through compliancy, she allowed the abuse to continue even after she separated by not reporting it.
Why? It doesn’t matter. And she’s dead, and cannot speak for herself anymore than through the deposition she provided. So could of, should of, might have…really doesn’t matter.

You have the information you have. Make your own decisions. But do not attack what other people have personally been through, or witnessed, just because it was not a part of your own painted world. There are a lot of us on here who survived abuse…and we too have to come to terms with all this. Debating the validity of what we’ve seen, what we’ve witnessed…you’re just as bad as the ones who told us to shut up, it’s not that bad, you need to get along with others, you shouldn’t have worn those shorts, and more. It’s not your world… but don’t try to tell me that what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard isn’t happening.

I’m guessing you haven’t read most of the source material. Which is okay. I know how hard it is to read.

I’d like you to consider that the reason MZB and Breen married is that: a) they had similar orientations (and I don’t mean they were lesbian/gay), and b) they got each other on a fundamental level that is squicky.

Marion copyedited Breen’s pederasty book.

It wasn’t complacency. She didn’t act until she feared losing her home and livelihood.

Every legitimate study I’ve seen found false reports of rape and sexual abuse to be uncommon. Further, we will not be getting into debates about false reports here. I see no reason to question the validity of the emails and comments Moira has posted.

This particular comment thread is closed. Thank you.

Lenora RoseJun 27, 2014 @ 00:43:41

One note: Moira, not Moria. The former is a person, the latter is a mine.

Is anyone at all considering the massive neon red flag that something was terribly wrong with her right there in Mists of Avalon? I have been reading about this scandal since 10 pm (it’s now 7:45 am), literally non stop, hunting for even one person to point out that Mists of Avalon has a scene, during some fertility festival, where an old man RAPES a little girl. And it’s ROMANTICIZED– written to be beautiful (which makes it even more horrific, IMO)! If I’m not mistaken, she writes that the little girl struggled at first, but then gave in. Seriously?!?! And people are shocked?! I mean, hindsight being what it is, how is nobody pointing this out? How on earth can anyone be so surprised by what her daughter has said if they’ve read that book, if they’ve read that severely disturbing scene? Good grief, when I read it 14 years ago I had to stop reading and go chain smoke for a good while because it disturbed me so much. It’s why I even remember her name! Smh.

The scenes of child rape in Mists deeply disconcerted me the first and only time I read the book. I think they are probably, subconsciously, a large part of the reason I’ve never re-read it since the first time I picked it up at 18. (I’m now 31.)

I wish I had been a bit older and a bit more mature when I read it. I do think it would have raised serious red flags for me if I’d read it, say, a year ago, even before we knew about the awful things Bradley did to real children. I wish I’d had the ability to understand, at 18, that my instincts to be upset and uncomfortable were right, and that this wasn’t just one of the most “adult” fantasy novels I’d yet read.

I had completely forgotten the child rape in Mists of Avalon, surprising since I found so much else to object to in this supposedly feminist and pagan-friendly work. Why are there so few (any?) good mothers in the work? Why do priestesses of a mother goddess not seem to mother their own children? Or one another’s children, for that matter. Who would be dumb enough to give your kingly heir, carefully bred to bridge the gap between Christian and Pagan, to Christians to raise, then run him through a sexual initiation rite with his own half sister that is guaranteed to shack and repel him? So the priestesses are lousy mothers and clueless about human nature and this somehow makes a feminist and pro-pagan work. Give me a break. I’m not saying every female in a novel has to be good, or smart for the work to be feminist, but a few would be nice.

As for MZB having been pagan friendly, I remember the furor when she published a book featuring evil witch coven planning human sacrifice (Inheritors?). She _excused_ it by saying that 1) she was not a witch (true so far as I know, but she did hang out with Witches, including being a speaker at a meeting of the Covenant of the Goddess sometime in the 80s) and that 2) she actually knew of such a group from early in her life. Wow, thanks for being a friend. Yet she let Pagan groups meet on her property and participated in Spiral Dance, a Pagan group.

I was not in fandom, so I don’t recall hearing anything about Breen. I only read two Darkover novels, the ones with the League of Free Amazons, that were pressed upon me by feminist fans. Didn’t realize the oddness of Mists until I reread it for a course in Arthurian fiction in the 90s.

YaguaraSehkmetJun 26, 2014 @ 17:50:00

It is a natural aspect of the way our brains function to want to categorize things. Life is so much easier when we can fit things neatly into discrete little boxes, slap a label on them, and be done with it. Human beings, however, are not neat things and I believe it would be the wrong decision in this case.

It does not surprise me to learn of MZB’s crimes and I absolutely believe Moria’s statements to be true. There was always something in her mother’s works that was off-putting to me. Perhaps my subconcious was warning me of the monster behind the words or perhaps I just didn’t like her writing. I cannot honestly say as my gut-reaction to crimes (especially sexual crimes) against children is frighteningly violent. I would never deny that the woman Moria describes was a horrific monster who should be destroyed. Were she alive today I would hope that the jury would gladly hand down a death penalty decision in such a case. I believe that such predators will never be anything less than a terrible threat to the community around them. Had Breen faced capitol punishment with his first conviction – how many other victims would have been spared? Those people who deny her crimes or attempt to excuse them are blinding themselves.

That being said, it is also wrong to deny the impact her works had on many readers, several authors, and the literature as a whole. Several people have commented on the “seperate the art from the artist” concept. This is not only inaccurate – it is impossible. Artists always express themselves in their art and there is often a certain creativity in madness. I do not belive that we are doing any good by seperating the artist from the art but I do believe that we should not ignore the impact of the art because of the crimes of the artist.

I have read (on other sites) posters calling for the elimination of her books from literature coursework, store shelves, and even suggestions of book burning. That is a very dangerous road to travel and it ends in a very bad place. If you decide for yourself to avoid her works and throw out your copies of her books then I support your decision and commend you for taking a moral stand on your beliefs. But if you would make that choice for someone else or deny their right to make a different choice then I must stand opposed to you – no matter that I too would toss out any of MZB’s books if I had any.

There is value to be had in an examination of MZB’s works from a literary perspective and from a psychological perspective. Her place in the history of fandom and science ficiton and fantasy literature is important and the revelations of her crimes does not diminsh that. Quite the opposite, IMHO. MZB’s personal story is both laudeable and cautionary. Laudable for the good things that her works brought to the genre and the community. Cautionary for the warning that no matter how much admiration we may have for someone or for their contributions to our favorite artform – it must NEVER excuse their crimes against others.

As painful and gut-wrenching as it may be to see both the good and the bad even in the monsters. It is important that we force ourselves to do so. We must not deny the art because of the crime. We must not deny the crime because of the art. We must see the whole truth with open eyes – only then can we learn from them.

One final comment to Moria directly. You have survived a hell that many do not. Only the greatest heroes can survive the agony and madness of an evil parent. You may not realize it but you are one of those heroes. I do not know you but I greatly admire you.

patJun 26, 2014 @ 17:58:58

Honestly, for people who were reading Darkover and other series long before Mists, child rape was not an uncommon theme in her narratives, either of girls or of boys. What was hard to discern was the *message* the author had over child rape — as I said, Dani is raped and tortured by Dyan in Heritage of Hastur. Tommy is abused, sexually and physically by Mario/Matt in Catchtrap. Most of her girls in Darkover were married as young teens, more or less at puberty and often against their will. So the theme was not uncommon.

At the same time, to me, her message was not clear. Certainly in her earlier works she was writing as someone opposed to marrying off girls – or boys – as “breeding stock” – a common theme in Darkover. But she also had a Darkovan customary period where due to flowers or moon cycles, everyone went mad and raped everyone – boys, girls, whatever. So that was a theme long before Mists. She allegedly wrote Catchtrap in 1948, which involved Tommy’s molestation by Matt and his physical abuse of Tommy. Now rape is not an uncommon theme in literature – Pat Conroy has hardly written a novel without a rape scene. So I never thought that made Marion a proponent or excuser of sexual abuse.

On the other hand, while her narratives often condemn rigid roles for women, and other social issues, she doesn’t really come down hard against many of her child abusers. Those who are main characters (Matt, Dyan) are often forgiven for their abuse, even loved by the abusers, in part because the abusers were mercurical, mad, whatever. That license was always something of a puzzle to me. As a reader, I couldn’t identify with Dani when he accepts Dyan and lets himself be adopted by the man who had previously enjoyed sexually terrorizing him. I always frankly felt either Marion had written these endings clumsily – i.e., she had boxed herself into a corner, plot wise and had to have that reconciliation to wrap up the story, or that I just wasn’t understand the message that she was writing. I thought perhaps she had written the characterization as well as the plot clumsily, to get herself to that point and that it wasn’t an intentional whitewash of the previous events. What has come out clears up some of that ambivalence and not in a good way.

But I am still puzzled and troubled. Now that Moira has come out about this, I hope she writes a biography, if not of her mother, then of herself. I think it will be cathartic for her, and also for Marion’s long time readers — hard to call us fans at this point — many of whom are reeling from this revelation. I don’t mean this from a prurient perspective. I think there is a moral lesson, in that based on what Moira has claimed, and the depositions, a lot of people turned away from seeing this abuse, and that needs to change. I wish I had heard, because I wouldn’t have been a reader of her books for decades. But also, a lot of us were children when we picked up MZB books. I was. I read the feminist messages, some of which had value – but also took in the disturbing mixed messages regarding child abuse and rape. I had trouble reconciling those then, as well as trouble reconciling the news now. A thoughtful biography might bring us all some closure.

Rin/DarkBladeJun 26, 2014 @ 23:43:49

Jim, thank you for posting this.

Something I’ve been struggling with isn’t just how to react to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work now that I know this, but that some of my favorite authors, a couple of them people whose work honestly helped me manage to keep my sanity in middle and high school, got started in MZB’s anthologies and magazines. Some of those authors have in the past said that they were mentored by MZB. I keep seeing that some of this was known, an open secret that fandom kept quiet. The question I keep wondering is “Dear gods… did [author] KNOW?” But that seems a helluva thing to write to someone to ask. “Hello, author person who I have looked up to/enjoyed your work for [x] years, did you know about your deceased friend and mentor’s roles in the abuse and molestation of children before it hit the fan on social media? Were you aware of it when she was still alive? If so, what did you do with that knowledge?” The phrasing could be better, but that’s pretty much what it boils down to.

It seems like a horribly rude thing to ask. Though, to my shame, I can’t figure out if my hesitancy to actually inquire is because it seems rude, or if it’s because I can’t yet figure out what to do if the answer is yes… all I know so far is that I end up nauseated with a tension headache every time I’ve tried to sit down and figure this out.

Rim/Darkblade
Yes, I feel much the same way. I have been thinking about crafting a respectful message to ask Diana Paxson those questions. I haven’t yet. I don’t want to offend her but it is somehow important to me that I know.

I don’t have any easy answers on this one. While it sounds like a number of people were aware of Breen’s crimes, at least to some extent, I’m less certain about MZB’s. The Breendoggle wiki and the depositions, both of which have been linked to, include some of the people who had an idea what was going on.

Beyond that, all I can really say is that for myself, I’ve chosen not to contact other individuals directly to ask about their involvement, if any.

I would think that most people who considered MZB a mentor didn’t have the faintest idea and will be shocked by these revelations. For two key reasons.

One is that child abuse is something that a person, family, or household hides from others. If you visit a home for dinner or a weekend now and then, you’ll notice if your hosts are slobs or neat-freaks. If you visit often enough, you might even notice if there’s a drinking problem (though not necessarily; I knew someone who died young of his alcoholism, so it was severe, yet he was able to hide it successfully from anyone who wasn’t actually living full-time with him). But if they’re abusing their children, that’s going to be deeply hidden during your visits. The children will also have been schooled to hide it. Unless you’ve got specialized training in recognizing the signs of a child suffering that trauma and trying to hide it, you’re not going to have the faintest idea what’s going on in this household you’ve visited a number of times.

Second, lots of people who considered MZB a mentor probably didn’t know her well personally and seldom (quite possibly never) visited her home or met her family. Writing is a lifestyle of long-distance relationships. You often don’t meet your editors or your agent in person until after you’ve been working with them for a while, you seldom know them personally or well, and most of the writers you know, including a famous novelist and generous mentor like MZB, are people you “visit” by phone, letter/email, and at conventions and workshops. There are any number of writers I’ve considered friends for years (in some cases, very close friends with whom I have weekly or daily contact)…. whose homes, spouses, and kids I’ve encountered only once–or never.

I gather there were, at various times, multiple people living in MZB’s household, though I don’t know who they were (apart from Waters, who stated in her deposition that Moira, when a child, confided that she was being abused, and Waters did not contact the police or social services, nor take any steps to help or protect the child). Perhaps some of them were writers who considered MZB a mentor; in which case, people will be asking now what they knew.

But I think most people who feel professional gratitude to MZB, who considered her a mentor or advocate, writers to whom she was generous and from whom she acquired stories–I would think the majority of them never knew her well enough, even if they sometimes visited the house, to know about the dark secret that she (and everyone involved, including the victims) would have taken care to keep secret.

craniestJun 27, 2014 @ 01:39:21

I had a short story rejected from Sword and Sorceress. Because of content. Because the male character was raped and the female character avenged it beautifully. MZB herself said that she did not finish the story from that point.

I wish I’d kept the rejection letter, because I laughed for DAYS about how if the two had been reversed it would have at least been considered. In light of the revelations since then, all I can say is that I’m glad I never sold a damn thing to her and I’m glad to have provided her with even a moment’s discomfort about it.

[…] Jim Hines, who received his “very first rejection letter” from Bradley, and who went on to sell stories to to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and to her anthology Sword & Sorceress XXI, wrote on his blog: “I’m proud of those stories. I believe the Sword & Sorceress series was important, and I’m grateful to Bradley for creating it. I believe her magazine helped a lot of new writers, and her books helped countless readers. All of which makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic.” […]

TeresaJun 27, 2014 @ 06:18:25

I’ve spent the past two days reading blogs, emails, and depositions, trying to formulate some kind of coherent reaction… coming up, on occasion to look around at -anything- that was not of this, trying to let my mind rest somewhere safe.

There are words, but not the right ones. There is reaction, but not that I can articulate. I am in need of the brain bleach, but not so much that I forget- just a blurring of details. A vivid imagination is a curse more times than not.

People are Sick.

This touches many things: the books that I love, the ‘Dream’, people I know that I now wonder ‘were they There? did they See or Hear?’ the thoughts running around in here are making me want to scream… or cry. I can only imagine what it must be like on the other side of this, looking out from this situation instead of in.

My heart goes out to all who were children touched by this ugliness in the hope they have found healing and some amount of peace. To Moira, I am sorry that this is news to any of us at this late date. FWIW *HUGS*

[…] Jim Hines[10], who received his “very first rejection letter” from Bradley, and who went on to sell stories to to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine and to her anthology Sword & Sorceress XXI, wrote on his blog: “I’m proud of those stories. I believe the Sword & Sorceress series was important, and I’m grateful to Bradley for creating it. I believe her magazine helped a lot of new writers, and her books helped countless readers. All of which makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic.” […]

MorganJun 27, 2014 @ 15:42:22

Thanks so much for writing this post, Jim. I agree with you completely. I run a used bookstore, and I am pulling all of Bradley’s books from my shelves indefinitely. I am a survivor of abuse myself, and I don’t want to run the risk of someone feeling triggered just by seeing her books on the shelves when they walk into my store. I know that may not ever happen even if I left her books on shelf. But it could. And I can’t stand the thought of helping trigger that trauma in another person when it’s so very avoidable.

I will probably keep my personal copy of The Mists of Avalon, at least for now, as the story meant a lot to me when I was younger. But I doubt I will ever buy or sell another book by Bradley again.

greek_jesterJun 27, 2014 @ 19:55:13

This is horrific. Absolutely horrific.

People knew about this abuse and did *nothing*? How have they have not been arrested for contributing towards the abuse of a minor?

As to those asking why it is only coming out now, 15 years after her death, I have 4 words for you: Jimmy Savile rape accusations.

Between the more open attitude towards victims of abuse in the last few years, and the power of social media that allows a message to be spread too far for the “let’s keep it quiet” brigade to smother it in time, victims of high-status abusers feel more capable of coming forwards.

Are there those who jump on the bandwagon and try for fame/money? Yes. Are there many, many more victims who finally feel as if people will listen to them? *Hell* yes.

Hopefully the courage of those like Moira will allow a few more high-status predators to be toppled; the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal in the UK has certainly led to quite a few accusations since then, several of which have led to convictions.

I don’t know about laws in the US but in a terrible case in Australia, not only did a woman only get 4 years for premeditated murder of her boyfriend but her best friend who knew and did nothing got a ‘not guilty’ and none of the other people who knew and did nothing even ended up in court. Look up “Joe Cinque’s Consolation”. I reviewed the book but didn’t say much about the story because I didn’t want to spoilt it for those who haven’t read it. http://www.darkmatterzine.com/joe-cinques-consolation/

[…] fantasy writer was violent and sexually abused her too. Like the writer Jim Hines who wrote the blog with all the details, I was a big fan of Zimmer Bradley who opened up the Arthurian mysteries to me. The world she […]

For those who are saying “alleged abuse of her daughter” and saying that children/young women “make these things up” and are using false allegations of abuse as power trips: please read the true story of my acquaintance Caitlyn Young, who was abused and blamed for her own abuse by society, which didn’t want to have any blame land on her brother, a football star–it is a Kindle single (you can get a free sample that will give you the beginning of the story and you’ll get the idea.) This happened SO MUCH back in the day. Those who knew or suspected these events were told to mind their own business and/or watch their backs and shut up. I am dismayed that more people are not outraged at MZB for molesting her OWN daughter from the age of three and trying to drown her for telling! I always thought her writing was creepy, and now I know what that undertone was that I heard in it. I feel that a writer reveals a lot of himself or herself in any work of fiction. That would be one reason I am avoiding her work from now on. Creepy.

Fandom and other self-contained interest groups offer a lot to their members and the world, but this is the dark side. If people knew, even if what they knew was incomplete, they had an obligation to share it. They had an obligation to the victims, to potential victims at conventions and to fandom at large to protect it from these predators.

As for Zimmer Bradley herself, I just don’t understand how someone’s personal life could be so — not just divorced from, but a complete inversion of her public persona. Her relationship with Breen reminds me, in a way, of Simone de Beauvoir’s abusive relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, but they were both consenting adults at least, not pedophile predators.

Just sad and ugly. My heart goes out to the victims, and to hell with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s corpus.

As a survivor of child sexual abuse, i find this devastating. During my teens & 20’s MZB’s books helped me escape, i found them such a comfort in the hardest times, only recently I reread the darkover series again & even though i am older now and my tastes have evolved, i so enjoyed them. Words are failing me. I have almost everything she published. I dont know if i can read anything by her again. I just dont know what to say. My heart & prayers go out to her children. I am reeling

Bryn SnowflakeJul 10, 2014 @ 21:30:25

I am tearing up my MZB books to compost them, a little sadly because they were very important to us in our teens and twenties, but also with some joy because it is a little bit of an outlet for my fury.

For anyone still cheerfully saying, “Oh, well, we don’t know the truth –” Here is something that MZB says herself, in writing about The Heritage of Hastur, the novel in which an older man tortures a teenage boy to the point of a nervous breakdown because said teenage boy won’t have sex with him:

“My message, of course, had not been intended to give aid and comfort to Gay Liberation; the message, if any, had simply been that no one can live and be healthy without self-knowledge and self-acceptance, whatever form one’s own differences may take. I am not a crusader for anything except the right of everyone to be what he must be, without being brutalized by the opinions of others. I regard Dyan Ardais, not as evil, but as unhappy, a man desperately at the mercy of his own misery and his own obsessions; and Dyan’s tragedy, I have always felt, was that he did not come to know Regis well until he had destroyed himself irrecovably in the younger man’s eyes.”

So yes, MZB thinks that you just have to accept your own pedophilia, and everyone can be whatever they want to be, and it’s not evil to torture people when they won’t have sex with you, it just means you’re very very unhappy. How much better if Dyan had managed to hook up with Regis (another teenage boy!) before Regis got upset about Dyan torturing his love interest!

I wrote about this topic today (http://www.ravenoak.net/archives/1334) and agree that you cannot separate an artist from their works, even posthumously when it involves silencing victims. As a former fan and writer myself, it’s part of my job to give voice to those who cannot speak–as it should be for all of humanity.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. This topic needs more exposure.

[…] suffered at the hands of her mother. A good summary of the fandom coverage by Jim Hines can be found here.) In addition, MZB’s husband, Walter Breen, was a serial molester of young boys, and Bradley […]

hermitmeAug 09, 2014 @ 18:31:37

And this is why I will now look up books from you and not be so enthralled by authors just because they are big names. Because yes, the silent victims will be the ones to continue suffering while the perps with the big names keep skating free, and that’s just wrong.

BradAug 11, 2014 @ 16:18:56

Jim,

I read your article and I found your avoidance to be typical of the problem. Samuel Delany was a supporter of NAMBLA, whom I am ardently opposed. But that does not mean his writing which has won numerous Nebulas and Hugos for and was recently given a SWFA lifetime award by your friend Scalzi should be tossed out. Yes I can take a stand and throw out his stuff and MZB and even Hitler’s Mien Kaumpf. But that does not change that these writings can shed insight into the human soul and even the societies of human history. If you can not separate the work that these people have created then yes, throw their writings away. But you will be the lesser person for tossing them aside. I would not deny Zelazny his awards, but I think Scalzi went to far when he made him an example for SWFA to admire (Grand Master). I think personal actions are what should have excluded him and should excluded MZB from ever being considered as a Grand Master. And anyone who tries to take my copy of the Mists of Avalon, don’t even think it.

It’s weird how a certain subset of commenters hear about a white author who molested multiple children and covered up the ongoing abuse committed by her husband, and immediately want to turn the conversation to the condemnation of a black author who said some troubling things in an interview twenty years ago.

I get that it’s probably more about a certain troll trying to score points than it is about racism, but still…

Beyond that, do what you want with your copy of Mists of Avalon. If you read the article, as you claim to have done, you know I’m not telling people one way or the other what they should do.

There’s a definite feeling on the part of the right that we don’t condemn liberals who do bad things. So I tend to see it more as a “do we really have principles” rather than racism per se. It’s just hard to tell in this particular case.

I’ve often wondered if people would have been so willing to believe Moira were MZB still alive, even if MZB’s testimony had been along the lines of her deposition.

Since apparently others have missed the news, I did blog about a later conversation.

The only reason, so far as I know, that it’s been so missed is that it was a dialogue between Delany and Will Shetterly. Which is, imho, unfortunate, and tends to reinforce the perception that liberals aren’t looking at the flaws in their heroes.

The tl;dr summary, from my perspective: Delany makes some good points (as does Shetterly), Delany has some problematic viewpoints, and I would not want him to be alone with any minor children in my care (even though there is no evidence that he’s done anything wrong as an adult with anyone who is a minor). I’m sorry, a six-year-old can’t consent.